Chapter XI: Front Matter (11)

At the moment of entering the train, a telegram was handed to Brandon, and as soon as the three were comfortably seated in their section the inspector read it with lips compressed and eyes oddly squinted. Then he handed the message to Seagraves, who read:

“Police record Olga Slavsky arrived. Wanted in three countries for complicity in murder nine counts. Escaped Russian Secret Police three times. At present fugitive from justice. Keep close watch on her. Renfrow, Chief Inspector.”

Seagraves returned the telegram to Brandon, winking an eye disparagingly and smiling at what the Chief Inspector had evidently considered a necessary precaution.

The afternoon waned. Early evening found the train three-quarters of an hour behind time. If this kept up they would not arrive before two in the morning.

Olga sat besides Seagraves facing Brandon.

“I would give much for a cigarette,” she announced out of a long silence at ten o’clock, addressing herself to Seagraves.

“This isn’t a smoker,” observed the crime specialist, glancing around, “but there are only two other passengers in the car. Try it.”

He offered her his box, and she took one and lighted it. Filling her lungs with the comforting smoke, she exhaled it in a great cloud and, after a meditative pause, murmured:

“At last I am to see poor Paul.”

She looked Seagraves steadily in the eye and added in a queer tone that she felt her brother was very near tonight.

It was a mixed train, and the day coaches appeared to have much the better of the sleepers as to occupancy. Seagraves noted casually that, besides themselves, their car boasted but two other passengers, and though they might have been snugly asleep in their respective berths, they had apparently elected to sit out the short run, evidently preferring reclining to rising and dressing at 1:30 or 2 o’clock A. M.

“Do you see the man sitting all alone in the last seat with the handkerchief over his face, to keep the light out of his eyes?” Olga’s ruminant voice finally broke in upon the monotonous _clackety-clack_ of wheels upon rail-joints.

“Yes--what about him?” asked Seagraves.

“Nothing, only he--he looks like Paul,” she answered in a guarded voice, as though she feared Brandon, cat-napping now, might overhear her strange language.

“Olga!” ridiculed the detective, “get a grip on yourself.”

Having thus counseled the prisoner, Seagraves was thoughtful for a long space; then he looked over at Olga, saw an odd, uneasy expression on her pretty face and quickly said:

“Here--have another cigarette, Olga. Burn ’em up!”

* * * * *

At midnight the conductor passed through the car.

“We’ll make the city a little before two o’clock,” he said in answer to a sleepy-voiced interrogation from Brandon, who seemed to have banished sleep and was blinking about the car.

“What--we all alone?” he asked Seagraves. Then he caught sight of the two lonely passengers at the far end of the car. “No; two others,” he murmured, answering his own question.

He was turning his gaze away from the man with the handkerchief over his face when something, Seagraves noted, drew his eyes inquiringly back to the sleeper’s hunched figure. The movement caused Seagraves to follow Brandon’s scrutiny. He marked the fact that the handkerchief had fallen from their fellow-passenger’s face, and--was it because of Olga’s suggestion, or was it merely a silly midnight fancy?--he assuredly seemed to trace a certain vague resemblance between the solitary sleeper and the notorious Paul Slavsky, long ago dead.

The idea brought with it a queer, though distinct, sense of unpleasantness. The booming voice of Brandon, breaking in upon his wholly disagreeable train of thought, was highly reassuring.

“Huh!” laughed the Inspector, “I thought I recognized that chap.”

At a quarter to one, Seagraves shook Brandon out of a doze and said, “Keep the lady company for a few minutes. I’m going into the smoker.”

“All right, Joe,” drawled Brandon opening his slightly reddened eyes and seeming to be perfectly wide awake.

Seagraves disappeared into the smoking-room, returning some ten or fifteen minutes later. To his surprise he noted that Brandon, evidently not caring to take a chance on Olga’s diving out of the open window, had handcuffed her fast to the seat and had once more fallen asleep. Olga herself appeared a trifle more cheerful. She even smiled, though somewhat wearily, as Seagraves resumed his seat beside her.

“I told you it would be Paul,” the woman whispered to Seagraves, as though determined to share no part of her secret with the despised Brandon. “See,” she insisted, growing almost jubilant, “it is my brother Paul--come back to me at last!”

“For God’s sake, Olga,” cried Seagraves disgustedly, “stop that foolishness. It gets on my nerves.”

Stillness then for several minutes.

Of a sudden Seagraves felt cold. He turned up his coat collar and, somehow rather depressed, sat looking across at the muffled figure of Brandon who, also evidently having felt the night chill, had wound a great muffler about his neck and pulled his ample Stetson low over his face. Seagraves reflected that this would be a fitting case with which to crown a long list of his old friend’s successes. Tomorrow he would congratulate him.

A long wild shriek from the locomotive startled Seagraves like an unexpected blow.

“Ha!” he said, “I must be developing nerves after all these years. Anyhow, we’re getting in.”

Then he raised his eyes and saw that the man, who, he had imagined, resembled Paul Slavsky, had disappeared. So had the only other passenger who had occupied a seat near him. It struck Seagraves as singular.

Another long wail from the locomotive blent dissonantly with the dreary _clackety-clack, clackety-clack_ of the car-wheels, and at the same instant the vestibule door was smashed open. Through it came stumbling, covered with blood, clothing torn to tatters, the identical man who had resembled Paul Slavsky.

His hands were securely cuffed, and he was being partly shoved and partly dragged forward along the aisle for all the world as though he were a wax dummy. His captor was no other than the traveler whom the detective had seen sitting near the dead Terrorist’s double.

“He fought like a tiger, Mr. Seagraves, but I finally got him. He’s one of Olga’s bunch--a second brother of hers, in fact. He heard that she was hard pressed and just landed from Europe to help her escape.”

Joe Seagraves sat like one stupefied. Jim McLean, of the Central Office, cleverly disguised as an innocent-looking rustic, had captured a third Slavsky, but how--where?

“It’s all right,” McLean was explaining. “You see, Renfrow got wind of this fellow’s game, got hold of a picture of him and sent me out to ride back with you and Brandon and the lady. I fell asleep in earnest, while pretending to be, and waked up just as my man was slipping out of the car. I got a good look at his face then and, recognizing him, made the first move in a scrap that lasted through six coaches and clear up to the coal-tender.”

“Why was the man slipping out?” demanded Seagraves, perplexedly.

“Ah! that’s it. I missed you from the car and suspected something wrong. Brandon seemed to be asleep and the woman was laughing. That was enough. I collared my man.”

Joe Seagraves reached over and gently shook Brandon, who, still sleeping like a rock, had slumped low down in the angle formed by the seat and the window.

“Come out of it!” the detective bawled at his companion, “we’re getting in.”

But Brandon slept on. Seagraves waited a moment, then shook him again, almost violently.

“Come on, Larry!” he said, himself rising.

But Brandon did not stir, and Seagraves darted a questioning glance at Olga, still handcuffed fast to the seat. To his amazement and alarm the woman was smiling, triumphantly, terribly. A vague surmise, which had come into Seagraves head hours before, was now confirmed.

There was no doubting that leering and awful smile. She had bitten the blood from her carmine lips. Olga Slavsky had gone stark mad!

In all the years that followed, Joe Seagraves was never able to free his memory from the haunting horror of the thing he beheld when, Brandon not reacting to violent shakes, he grew suspicious and lifted his unresponsive friend’s big hat off his head--or rather off--_a vacant-eyed and staring dummy head_!

* * * * *

Paul Slavsky had not _returned_ as Olga had predicted he would, but a last gruesome reminder of his own hideous handiwork was nevertheless present.

When the first shock of horror had passed, and Seagraves and McLean again focused their incredulous eyes on Olga Slavsky, they knew that the woman, though handcuffed, had herself participated in this last act of terrorism in America. It was incredible, but there, before the detectives’ eyes, were the facts themselves.

The blood from her bitten lips streaking her Patrician chin, Olga sat composedly folding and unfolding her daintily-patterned hands, quite as a vampire folds and unfolds its repellent wings; toying, as might a child, with the polished handcuffs which supposedly had held her a prisoner, and--before the amazed eyes of her beholders--_slipping the locked manacles on and off over her tiny, flexible hands_!

Unearth Vast Wealth in Egyptian Tomb

Rare treasures of art, priceless gems and the royal trappings of ancient times were discovered by archaeologists when they tunneled their way into the funeral chambers of King Tutankhamen [1358-1350, B. C.] in the Valley of Kings near Luxor, Egypt. Describing the discovery, Lord Carnarvon wrote to a Chicago newspaper correspondent:

“At last a passage was cleared. We again reached a sealed door or wall. We wondered if we should find another staircase, probably blocked, behind this wall, or whether we should get into a chamber. I asked Mr. Carter to take out a few stones and have a look in. He pushed his head partly into the aperture. With the help of a candle, he could dimly discern what was inside.... ‘These are marvelous objects here,’ he said.

“I myself went to the hole, and I could with difficulty restrain my excitement. At the first sight, with the inadequate light, all that one could see was what appeared to be gold bars. On getting a little more accustomed to the light, it became apparent that there were colossal gilt couches with extraordinary heads, boxes here and boxes there. We enlarged the hole and Mr. Carter managed to scramble in--the chamber is sunk two feet below the bottom passage--and then, as he moved around with a candle, we knew we had found something unique and unprecedented.”

Among the many treasures which they found in the tomb were royal robes, embroidered with precious stones, the state throne of King Tutankhamen, portraits of the king and queen, incrusted with turquoises, lapis lazuli and other gems, two life-sized golden statues of the king, with gold scepter and mace, and four gem-studded chariots.

_The_
HOUSE _of_ DEATH

_A Strange Tale_

_By_ F. GEORGIA STROUP

The three women looked about the little kitchen. For some reason, each seemed to avoid the eyes of the other.

“My land, but it’s hot in here!” Mrs. Prentis moved to the north window to raise it.

As she propped up the heavy sash with a thin board that lay on the sill, a gust of hot wind swept through the room from a drought-parched Kansas cornfield.

Seeking relief in action, her daughter, Selina, hastened to the opposite window and pushed it up, as a cloud of dust thickened in the road in front of the house. A small herd of bawling cattle were milling past the house in the heat and glare of the August sun. Their heads drooped dejectedly and their tongues lolled from parched mouths.

“My land, Seliny, there goes another bunch of cattle out west. Does beat all how hard ’tis to get water in this country. Jes’ seems to me sometimes like I’d die for a sight of mountains an’ green things an’ a tumblin’ little stream that’d run an’ ripple all summer.”

Motherly Mrs. Collins wiped the perspiration from her large, red face and fanned herself with her blue sunbonnet.

“Didn’t Mamie Judy come from the mountain country?” she asked.

“Yes; we went to the same school. When she was a girl she had the blackest eyes and the prettiest red cheeks of any girl you ever did see. Didn’t look much like she does now! A farmer’s wife soon goes to pieces. She was such a lively girl, too--so full of fun. An’ now jes’ to think what the poor thing’s come to!”

Again the three women avoided each other’s eyes. Then Selina spoke nervously:

“Do you ’spose she did it, Ma?”

“There you go with your ’sposin’ again! Better get to work and straighten up this house. That’s what we come over for, ain’t it?”

Mrs. Collins rose heavily from her chair and unrolled and donned a carefully-ironed, blue-checked apron.

“Seems kinda funny to have the funeral here, don’t it?”

“Oh, I don’t know. The graveyard’s handy an’ it’s so far to the church.”

“Yes, that’s so; ’tain’t far to the cemetry. Always seemed to me that Mamie’d found it kinda spooky, always seein’ the graveyard right through that window there over the stove. Bein’ up on top of that rise, an’ only half a mile away, would make it seem to me kinda like livin’ in a graveyard.”

“Selina, take this here bucket an’ bring in some water. My land, I don’t see how Mamie ever got through with all her work an’ took care of the baby. Her bein’ so old, an’ it her first, made it harder, too. Never thought her an’ Jed would have any children.”

“Things do need reddin’ up pretty considerable,” spoke Mrs. Collins, as she picked up some odds and ends of clothing from a corner, where they had lain long enough to accumulate a coating of acrid dust.

“My jes’ look at the linin’ in this firebox! How d’you ever ’spose Mamie managed to cook on it?”

“Must have been pretty hard. She didn’t have things fixed as handy as some of the rest of us, even. You see, they didn’t have much money to spend on things. Farmin’ in Kansas ain’t been a payin’ business the last few years. When ’tain’t too wet, it’s too dry, or too hot, or too cold, or somethin’.”

“Yes, it seems like there’s always somethin’. There--I’ve got that sweepin’ done. We’ll let Selina scrub, while we fix up the front room.”

The two women opened the door into the “front” room. The blinds were tightly drawn and the musty odor testified to its lengthy isolation.

* * * * *

“My land! look at that, will you?”

Mrs. Prentis pointed to a cheap colored glass on the center-table, which held a pitiful little bouquet of one immortelle, six pale spears of a rank grass and a carefully-cut-out letterhead of a printed spray of orange blossoms.

“Who’d a thought of tryin’ to make a bouquet out o’ that? I remember, when we were back in Tennessee, that Mamie was always findin’ the first deer’s tongues and other kinds of little early flowers. Us big girls always helped fill her little hands. Seemed like she never could get all she wanted. An’ then think of livin’ out here where there ain’t water enough for things that has to have it, let alone flowers. Why, I remember one summer when we even saved the dishwater to use several times, and then fed it to the pigs ’cause water was so scarce.”

“Yes; the way farmer’s wives have to worry ’long, ’tain’t much wonder so many of ’em go crazy. I read in th’ paper that was ’round a bundle that come from the store that a bigger part of farmers’ wives went crazy than any other kind of women.”

“Yes, I’ve heard that too. Let’s jes’ step in an’ pick up in the bedroom, and then sweep both these rooms out together. The wind’s in th’ right direction.”

“Yes, you come with me. We--we could get done sooner, workin’ together.”

“That must be the pallet an’ this th’ pillow. They say the baby had been dead for several hours when Jed found it.”

“Yes, an’ Mamie settin’ out there in the barn door, with her head in her lap. Not cryin’ nor nothin’.”

The two women hesitated, lingered at their task. Something kept them from moving the things that the coroner had kept in so rigidly exact a position.

“Yes; there’s somethin’ mighty queer about it. My land, jes’ think, she might be--HUNG!” in a hoarse whisper.

Both faces blanched at the hitherto unspoken possibility. A woman--neighbor and friend, and the childhood acquaintance of one of them--was imprisoned on the charge of killing her baby.

They felt that they ought to have a feeling of horror. It was a terrible crime, with seemingly only one explanation, but to both there arose visions of the unexpected satisfying of the craving mother heart of the work-worn farm drudge; of her seeming happiness and joy at the little cuddling head in the hollow of her arm and the soft lips on the breast, as the little form was held tightly to its mother’s bosom.

“I don’t care what the coroner’s jury said, I don’t believe Mamie could ’a’ done it. But still--if she didn’t, who _did_?”

“Yes, an’ then, if she didn’t do it, why don’t she say so? She knows they might hang her.”

“They say she ain’t said one word since Jed found her out there in the barn door. My land, but ain’t it hot?”

“Yes, there bein’ no trees ’round here, jes’ seems like the sun bakes right through the roof. Well, we might as well begin to pick up. The funeral’s at ten tomorrow. I can come over early; can you?”

“Yes, I’ll be here. I’m goin’ to stay an’ set up tonight. Mr. and Mrs. Shinkle said they’d come over. Selina can get supper for her pa an’ th’ boys.”

“We’d better change them cloths.”

The women tiptoed into the little lean-to, with that expectant hush that the presence of death always causes.

On an improvised table, a little form lay covered with a sheet, above a box of slowly melting ice. The country ministrations of neighborly service were completed, and the women left the room and returned to their task of cleaning in the front of the little farmhouse.

“My land, but it’s quiet here! Bein’ so far off the main road, seems like a person never sees nor hears nobody. It’s enough to drive a person crazy.”

* * * * *

The older woman had been standing for several minutes, with her mind preoccupied by struggling thought. At last she spoke:

“See here, Mis’ Prentis, if this pillow’d been standing up like this, it could’ve fell over on the baby. See?”

Both women bent over the carefully-folded bedclothing, placed upon the floor for the sake of a slightly cooler strata of air and also to obviate the possibility of the baby rolling off, while the mother was busy in some of the many tasks of the unaided farmer’s wife.

Little by little, the bedroom was straightened and the two rooms swept and dusted. Then Mrs. Prentis paused as she gave a final look around the rooms, walked to one of the windows on the south and ran a speculative finger over the glass. It was so heavily coated with dust as to be practically opaque. Then she stepped to the two windows on the east side of the room and looked at them. The panes of glass in both were clean and carefully polished.

“Now why do you suppose that is?” she asked.

Mrs. Collins, who had been following her moves, shook her head.

“I don’t know,” she answered, “Did you notice that the one in the kitchen, on the south side above the stove, hadn’t been washed, either? I noticed it when I went over to look at the firebox when you spoke.”

“Yes, that’s so,” said Mrs. Prentis, standing in the kitchen door and glancing at the south windows of one room and then at the other.

“See here, do you ’spose--that is--I mean both of these windows on the south side are toward the graveyard--do you ’spose that Mamie left ’em that way _on purpose_?”

“Well, there’s a good deal to do on a farm, and mebbe she got as far as the south side washin’ windows some day, and then had to quit for some reason.”

“Yes, but these ain’t been washed for _months_. Poor little Mamie! Mebbe she just couldn’t stand to be everlastingly seein’ them gravestones.”

“I wish, oh _how_ I wish, I’d ’a ’come over here oftener! We don’t live so far away; but seems like I never get time to get all my work done, and when I do there’s not time to walk, or I’m too tired, an’ o’ course the horses are always busy.

“What with fruit cannin’, and hayin’ hands, an’ threshin’, an’ little chickens, the summer’s gone ’fore you know it, an’ then the winter’s too cold and snowy, or too wet an’ muddy to get out, an’ the first thing you know another year’s slipped by.”

Motherly Mrs. Collins nodded her head in sympathy. An older and a heavier woman, all that Mrs. Prentis had said applied better than equally well to her.

“No wonder Mamie loved the baby so,” she said, “though she ain’t been overly strong since it was born. Jes’ think of the years and years she was here all alone, for Jed used to work out a good deal an’ she done all the work here. Years an’ years of stillness--an’ then the baby she’d never give up wantin’ and hopin’ for.”

“Yes, when I think what a woman’s got to go through here on a farm, I don’t never want Selina should get married. Seems like it’s enough sometimes to make a mother wish her girl baby could die when it’s little--”

She gasped. Both women gave a frightened start.

“No; ’course I don’t mean that,” she added hastily. “I jes’ mean you love ’em so that it don’t seem no ways right for ’em to have to grow up to what you see in front of ’em.”

“Well, we better quit talkin’ an’ lay out th’ baby’s things. ’Spose we look in the bureau in the bedroom.”

They moved again to the inner room and pulled out the top drawer of the old-fashioned marble-topped bureau.

A few shirts, a pile of carefully mended underwear and some socks, rolled and turned together in two’s, met their gaze.

“That’s Jed’s drawer. Let’s see what’s in the next one.”

The second drawer revealed a freshly-ironed white waist carefully folded above a meager pile of woman’s underwear. Without a word, Mrs. Prentis pushed it shut.

The third drawer proved to be the one they wanted. Small piles of carefully made baby clothing of cheap material, but workmanship of infinite pains, met their view.

Mrs. Collins wiped the tears from her cheeks with the corner of her apron.

“See--they’re nearly ever’one made by hand and all white. Most of ’em jes’ flour sacks, but look how Mamie’s bleached ’em. An’ see this drawn-work.”

As she spoke, she placed a work-reddened hand beneath a narrow strip of openwork.

“Yes, you can go home now,” in answer to a question from Selina in the kitchen.

“My, the pains she’s took on all these little things! Seems ’s if she must ’a’ been gettin’ ’em ready all these years, an’ now--” Her voice trailed off into silence.

The little clothing was laid on the bed in readiness for the morrow, and the women looked about as though hunting something more to do. Used to the busy hours of farm life, they felt impelled to some task that would occupy the passing hours.

“Let’s see if there’s anything we ought to do upstairs.”

They climbed the narrow ladderlike stairway to an unfinished half-story garretlike room above.

* * * * *

“My land, she was house-cleanin’ this hot weather!”

Half of the stuffy little room had been thoroughly overhauled and the other end begun. A little old horse-hair trunk stood in the middle of the floor, with portions of its contents scattered about.

“I’ll bet she was goin’ to empty that for the baby’s things. I showed her mine, jes’ like it, that I fixed up for Selina when she was little.”

“Well, we might as well pick up the things and put ’em back,” said orderly Mrs. Collins, who suited the word to the action by laboriously bending with a slight grunt.

Mrs. Prentis pushed her back.

“Here, let me pick ’em up. There ain’t no call for you to go stoopin’ ’round in this heat. First thing you know you’ll be havin’ a stroke.”

Some clothing and small articles were collected, and several bundles of yellowed old letters lay on the floor. From one of the packages the string had broken, evidently when it had been lifted from the trunk. One letter lay crumpled near its empty envelope, where it had been dropped.

With a wondering glance, the two women smoothed it out. The first paragraph was so yellowed and faded as to be illegible, but part of the second paragraph had been protected by the folded paper and they could read:

“_ ... will say that your wife is hopelessly insane. She may live for years, but will never regain her mentality, as cases like hers are incurable. We find upon investigation that the women of her family, for several generations, have become hopelessly insane at her age._

“_In view of the fact that your small daughter is tainted with this inherited insanity, we strongly advise you to take her to some new environment and, when she grows older, explain to her why marriage should be considered impossible for her._

“_As we can see the matter now, it is too bad that her mother was not warned of the same fact, and in view of all our information it would seem to have been better if we had not pulled her through that severe illness. If you--_”

The remainder of the letter was undecipherable. The two neighbors looked at each other, their eyes wide with horror. At last Mrs. Prentis gasped hoarsely:

“Do you ’spose that bundle broke open and Mamie read this letter? Her father died ’fore she was old enough to marry and left her this place partly paid for, and I remember when her and Jed was married how they planned to pay the rest of it off jes’ as soon as possible.”

“But,” interrupted Mrs. Collins, “the coroner’s jury said yesterday that they wasn’t any manner of doubt but that she _wasn’t_ crazy. She jes’ set there, with her solemn big eyes, and looked straight ahead and never said a word.

“I wonder how a woman’d feel to know that the baby girl she loved better’n her own life would have to grow up in this drudgery and then finally spend the last of her years in a ’sylum?”

“Yes and ’spose Mamie went crazy herself long ’fore the little girl grew up?”

“I wonder if a woman really loved her baby girl if she wouldn’t rather--” she stopped once more with a frightened look.

Wheels were heard coming down the lane.

Mrs. Prentis spoke quickly: “Sarah Ann Collins, we’re goin’ right downstairs and stick this letter in that cook-stove, quick!”

* * * * *

In the little kitchen below, the women were cooking supper when the county attorney and another man entered.

“Good evening, ladies,” said the attorney. “We decided to come out again and go carefully over the field to see if we could find any evidence. You haven’t, by chance, found anything, have you?”

Mrs. Prentis looked covertly at Mrs. Collins, then answered:

“No; we jes’ been cleanin’ up. We ain’t been lookin’ for no evidence.”

“Well, Walters,” said the attorney, “you know juries when it comes to women. If there never is found a definite reason for her wanting the baby to die, no jury will ever believe she is guilty.”

“Evil Demon” Drives Man to Orgy of Crime

Spurned by his young niece, Estanislao Puyat, a Filipino, ran amuck in the streets of Manila, after throwing the girl from an upper window to the ground and almost killing her. Grabbing his bolo, he rushed down the street, stabbed an aged woman in the eye, cut off the hands of two other women, slashed another, stabbed a Chinese merchant and a cart driver, cut another woman on the forehead, wounded a child and a young Filipino girl, and then, reaching the Bay, threw himself into the water in an effort to commit suicide. Capt. H. H. Elarth threw a noose over his head and dragged him ashore. The Filipinos say that Puyat was “de malas,” meaning he was possessed of an evil demon.

_A Five-minute Story_

_The_ Gallows

_By_ I. W. D. PETERS

Tomorrow morning, at sunrise, I am to hang for the murder of a man.

At sunrise on the ninth of June, the anniversary of my wedding day. I am to be hanged by the neck until I am dead.

I am glad this state has not yet adopted the use of electricity in executions. I prefer to spend my last moments out in the open under the sky.

The building of the gallows is finished; the workmen are gone, and it seems that the execution at sunrise is certain to take place; but every step along the corridor sends my heart into my mouth. Gladys is working for a reprieve. I am praying she will not succeed.

The Governor is off on a fishing trip, away from railroad and telegraph. If they do not locate him in the next few hours I shall be hanged. God grant they fail to find him!

It is Glady’s will against mine. She usually wins, but every passing minute lessens her chance to have her way in this. It is now ten minutes to midnight. Dr. Brander, the prison chaplain, has just left me, gratified, poor fellow, that he has succeeded in reconciling me to my fate. If he had known that the tall skeleton of wood outside, with its lank line of rope, was in my mind a refuge, he would have turned from me in horror.

The next five hours will be the longest of my life. Every step in the corridor strikes fear to my heart. It is not because I am guilty of the crime, for which I was sentenced, that I am glad to die. I _am_ guilty, but that doesn’t mean that I deserve to die.

I am going to hang tomorrow at sunrise because _I want to be hung_!

I could have saved myself, but refused to do so, solely because life had lost its savor, a great wave of disgust with living possessed and still possesses me. I am writing these words now that Gladys may know the truth. She has tried to see me, ever since I was brought here, and I have refused to be seen. That is one right a condemned man has--to refuse to see visitors.

* * * * *

From the day we were married, Gladys demanded to know my every thought, my every act every hour of the day.

If every one of them was not concerned with her she criticised, condemned or cried. She resented, in bitterly-spoken words and equally bitter acts, the small recesses of my soul that I, for the sake of my own self-respect, kept to myself.

Finally she determined to show me that there were other men who appreciated her, if I did not. For a while, after that, all hours of the day and evening my home was infested with lounge lizards. I endured it without a word, which infuriated her.

Lester Caine, a young fellow, honest and simple, was her first victim. The first time I found him seated close beside her on the dimly lit porch I welcomed him warmly. We smoked and talked of our days in the army together. I felt that Gladys could safely enough flirt with such as Lester, if that was what she wanted: but Lester called only a few times after that.

For two months there was a succession of young fellows about the place. Our house was not far from the Westmoor Country Club, and the golf links came almost up to our side-yard. Our porch was a convenient place to “drop in.”

Suddenly all that sort of thing ceased. Gladys was away a great deal, but as her mother lived in a town just a few miles away I thought nothing of that. She became very quiet, was thoughtful, absent-minded, flushed easily, seemed not herself.

At first I was a good deal puzzled, then, suddenly an explanation for the change in her dawned on me. Joy filled my soul. I was inordinately gentle with her, bought her a small automobile for her birthday, did everything I could think of for her comfort and pleasure.

After all, I told myself, the emotional phase she had passed through was natural. Marriage is a more difficult readjustment with some than others. It had evidently been so with Gladys. If a child came to us it would make everything right.

A child--_our child_! It was wonderful to think of. She had always refused to consider the subject saying she wished to enjoy life while she was young. But she knew I wanted a son to bear my name, a daughter to inherit her beauty, and she had accepted the inevitable. A wave of exaltation made me feel as if I were treading on clouds. I longed to mention the subject to her, but I felt that the first word about it should come from her.

I spent hours thinking of tender, loving things to do for her. She accepted everything quietly, sometimes with averted face and flushed cheeks. I would draw her inert figure into my arms and hold her close, but she made no response to my demonstrative affection.

At this stage of affairs my firm sent me on a ten-day trip to close a Western deal. It was hard to leave Gladys, but now, more than ever, I felt that we would need money, and lots of it.

We arranged for Gladys to go to her mother’s, and I was to join her there on my return.

It is the same old story. I came home before I was expected, and went straight to our cottage, with the intention of having Glady’s room redecorated before bringing her home.

At the gate stood Gladys’ car. I rushed into the house, but there was no one on the lower floor, nor in Gladys’ room, nor mine. I was about to descend the stairs when I heard a low laugh--a man’s laugh--from the third floor. I dashed up there and stood gazing at the closed door of the spare room.

“What’s the idea, running away from me?” asked the man. “You can’t blow hot and cold with me.”

“I told you not to come here again. It’s not safe.”

“I’m not afraid of that husband of yours. You’re mine, and you’re going to stay mine.”

I had listened intently, but could not recognize the man’s voice.

“Go now,” pleaded Gladys, “and I’ll come to your rooms this evening.”

“Not on your life! I’m here now, and I am going to stay.”

“Let go of me--you are hurting my shoulder.”

There was a sound of scuffing. I tried the door. It was locked. I put my shoulder to it. The lock snapped.

Gladys gave a cry, leaped away from the man--a man whom I had never seen before. The full-lipped, black-browed type, big, soft. As I took in the scene--the tousled woman, the flushed-faced man--a great wave of disgust almost overwhelmed me.

“Well,” said the man, sneeringly, “what are you going to do about it?”

“If you take her away now and treat her right--nothing.”

“And if I don’t take her away?”

“I’ll meet that situation when it comes.”

“It has come,” he said, with a laugh, and walked out.

I am tall, slender, delicate-looking, but I knew I was a match for that overfed brute.

I listened to the clatter of his feet on the stairs. Then I followed him.

* * * * *

The man was hastening toward a street car.

I cranked Gladys’ car and followed. It was easy to keep the street car in sight and to keep an eye on his sleek black head.

He left the car at Hanson Street. I, without a glance toward him, kept on ahead. I turned at the corner, in time to see him enter an office building. I was not far behind him when he took the elevator. The man in the elevator gave me the number of his office.

He was telling a joke to his typist as I entered, but his laughter died when he saw me.

“You dirty thief! You’ll never cheat another man out of money!”

His look of astonishment, as I shouted these words, was amusing. He tried to give blow for blow, but I meant what I said when I shouted at him “I’ve come here to kill you!”

To choke the life out of an overfed beast is not so hard to an infuriated man. In less than a quarter of an hour he was dead. The police, for whom the typist had called, filled the room even before I had straightened my disheveled clothing.

I practically tried my own case, and I was skillful enough to make every word, apparently uttered in my own defense, sound black against me.

Gladys tried to save me by telling the true story of the affair, but I made a picture of her as a devoted, self-sacrificing wife, willing to ruin even her spotless name to save her husband. I enjoyed seeing her cringe as I did this.

So skillfully had she and the big brute managed that there was not a bit of evidence to substantiate her story. On the other hand, there was the typist’s story to help me, and, too, it was known I had speculated in the past, and that I had lost some money.

I made the most of everything against me, and it was enough. I was sentenced to hang on the ninth day of June at sunrise.

Gladys came to the jail to see me while the trial was going on, but I managed to act just as if my story were the true one and hers the false, and, though she pleaded with me to let the truth come out, I would not admit that the truth had _not_ come out. The sentence was a terrible shock to her. Her mother carried her from the court-room in a faint. Before she recovered I was in prison.

* * * * *

I shall welcome the hour of sunrise as I never welcomed any moment of my life.

Not until then will the fear of a reprieve leave me. Gladys is moving heaven and earth to locate the Governor. God grant that she does not succeed!

It is four forty-five. I have spent much time at the window, gazing out into the darkness. What comes after death? That is the question, I suppose, that all men ask at the end of life. I have never done so. It is a futile question--one which none of us can answer. But I believe there will be surcease from the nausea that comes to those who have known disillusion and disappointment.

Ten minutes of five--now surely I am safe from even a chance of a reprieve!

Footsteps in the corridor! Is it my escort to the gallows, or--what I fear most on earth?

* * * * *

A statement by the warden of Larsen Penitentiary:

“_If Traylor had spent the brief period, always allotted to a criminal for a few last words, his reprieve would have reached us in time to stay the execution; but he walked calmly, unfalteringly up to the gallows and helped us, with steady hands, adjust the cap and ropes--and he was dead two minutes before the Governor’s message reached us._”

_For a Grim Tale With a Terrifying
End We Recommend_

_The_
SKULL

_By_ HAROLD WARD

Kimball held up his hand, warningly.

“Listen!” he exclaimed in a whisper.

Then he shoved the bottle back from his elbow and reached for his revolver, which hung just above the table. Buckling the belt about his waist, he leaped for the door and threw it open.

The house, raised on pile foundations a dozen feet above the ground, shook beneath the rush of retreating footsteps. With the swiftness of a wild animal, he gathered himself for the spring--and landed squarely astride the back of the last of the blacks to quit the place.

The weight of the white man brought the native to the ground. Seizing the black by the hair, he jerked him to his feet, keeping the naked body between himself and the crowd that lurked in the darkness, just beyond the ring of light that shone down through the open door.

“What name?” he demanded in the _beche-de-mer_ of the Islands. “What for you come around big fella house? I knock seven bells out of you quick!”

Still grasping the man’s kinky wool with his left hand, his right shot out, landing a terrific blow on the native’s mouth. The black, spitting blood and broken teeth, squirmed in agony and attempted to give a side glance at his fellows. Seeing that none intended to aid him, he jerked his head to one side in an effort to escape. The white man straightened it with another blow.

“What name?” he demanded again.

“Me good fella boy,” the black answered with an effort. “Me fella missionary!”

“Then you say one fella prayer damn quick!”

Kimball rained blow after blow on his face. The savage shrieked with agony. In the shadow, the blacks shuffled uneasily, like a herd of cattle ready to stampede, but the white man seemingly gave them no heed.

At last, the punishment completed, he jerked the bow and arrows from the unresisting hand of his victim and, whirling him suddenly, gave him a kick and a shove which landed him on all fours in the midst of the others. Then, turning, seemingly ignoring the thoroughly frightened blacks, he reëntered the house.

Throwing the bow and arrows on the table, he poured himself a stiff drink of gin and downed it at a gulp. And then, sitting down beside the table, he picked up the weapon and examined it gingerly.

“Poisoned!” he remarked casually to the man lying on the bed. “I knocked bloody hell out of Tulagi as a lesson to the rest of ’em. They’re getting insolent, with only one of us to handle ’em. Wish to heaven you were up and around again.”

“Upon the platform, eh?” the sick man listlessly inquired.

Kimball nodded.

“They’re gettin’ bold,” he said shortly. “Five hundred niggers are too many for one man to keep straight. It’s been plain hell since you went down--and then the dog had to turn up his toes. When Donaldson comes in next week with the _Scary-Saray_ we’ll have to send after a new nigger-chaser. Chipin’s got a couple extra ones he’s been trainin’ over at Berande.”

The sick man rolled over with a groan.

“Thank heaven I was taken sick!” he remarked bitterly. “It’s hard, God knows, but it gave me a chance to find out just what sort of a cur you are, Kimball.”

Kimball scowled. He half opened his mouth as if to answer. Then, thinking better of it, he poured himself another drink and resumed his occupation of examining the weapon he had taken from the native. He swayed slightly in his chair under the load of liquor he was carrying, yet his voice was unblurred as, after a minute’s silence, he looked across at the other.

“Can’t you get that out of your head, Hansen?” he remarked. “I’m getting bloody well fed up on it.”

Hansen raised himself on an elbow and angrily shook his fist at the other.

“Oh, you’re ‘getting bloody well fed up on it,’ are you?” he mimicked. “I should think you would be! I suppose I’m hurtin’ your delicate feelings by mentioning it to you, eh? It’s nothing a man should howl about, is it?--having one he thought was his best friend pull off a dirty stunt like that!”

Kimball poured himself another drink. His hand shook slightly as he raised the glass to his lips.

“Oh, forget it and go to sleep!” he growled.

“Yes, ‘forget it,’ you damned crooked, lyin’, double-crosser! I’m apt t’ forget how you wrote to Gladys and told her I’d taken a nigger wife! Wanted her yourself, didn’t you, you low-down, gin-guzzling rat! It was just a piece of luck that I was taken sick and you had t’ look after the plantation instead of goin’ after th’mail last time, or I’d never have got that letter from her telling me why she’d turned me down.”

“I’m telling you now, for th’ last time, that I didn’t write that stuff to her!” Kimball snarled back. “I’m tellin’ you it’s a lie. I showed you the letter I wrote to her, giving her my word of honor that somebody’d been doin’ you dirt.”

“Who else is there here on the Island that knew her back home?” Hansen demanded, dropping back onto the pillows again. “And who else knew that we were engaged?”

“How in hell do I know?” Kimball answered thickly, reaching unsteadily for the bottle. “You’re a sick man, Hansen, or I’d beat you up for th’ way you’re talkin’ to me.”

The sick man raised himself from the pillows again with a snort of anger, his face flushed, his eyes gleaming feverishly.

“It’s a long road that’s got no turn in it!” he muttered. “It’s my money that’s in this plantation, Kimball--my money against your experience. And keep that damned arrow pointed th’ other way, you fool! You’re drunk--too drunk to be monkeyin’ with weapons. You’d just as soon shoot me as not: if you do, I’ll get you if I have to come back from th’ grave to do it! And remember this, Kimball: Soon’s I’m able to be up and around again, we’ll have a settlement. And out you’ll go from this plantation, you--”

Whether it was an accident, or plain murder nobody knows. Kimball was drunk--beastly so. The arrow was loaded in the bow and clasped between his trembling fingers, the bow-string taut. And Hansen had annoyed him, angered him, bullied him, cursed him. At any rate, as he slumped forward in his chair, the bow-string slipped from between his thumb and finger, and--

Hansen dropped back onto the pillows with a smothered scream, the arrow buried deep in his temple!

_II._

It was past midnight when Kimball awoke from his drunken stupor.

For an instant, he had no recollection of what had happened. The oil lamp still burned brightly, throwing the figure of the man on the bed in bold relief.

Kimball half arose on his tiptoes so as not to awaken Hansen. His foot touched the bow lying on the floor. Then a flood of realization swept over him. He suddenly remembered that he was a murderer.

Whether he had killed Hansen intentionally or not he was unable to recall. Memory had ceased on the second he sprawled forward, his tired brain benumbed with the liquor he had consumed during the evening. He knew that they had quarreled--that Hansen had been more abusive than usual and had cursed him.

He stepped across to the bed. A single glance at the bloated face already turning black--at the glassy eyes staring back at him fixedly--told him that his surmise had been correct: the arrow had been dipped in poison. He shuddered as he pushed the remaining arrows, which he had taken from Tulagi, to the back of the table and poured himself another drink.

He must act at once. Donaldson and the _Scary-Saray_ would arrive within a few days. And Donaldson was no fool. Nor was Svensen, his mate. Both of them knew that there was bad blood between the partners. And should one of the house boys find the body in the morning it would cause no end of talk among the niggers. Some of them would be certain to talk to Donaldson. The big trader might be able to put two and two together and take his suspicions to the authorities.

Reaching up, he pulled down his revolver and, buckling the belt around his waist, tiptoed to the door. The rain was falling in torrents, and the sound of the surf was booming loudly. The sky was split by lightning, while the thunder rolled and grumbled.

It was a typical island squall; he knew it would last but a short time. Yet, while it lasted, the blacks would all be under cover, making him safe from spying eyes if he acted at once.

But fear--fear of he knew not what--caused him to pull down the shades until not a vestige of light showed at sides or bottom.

Then, nerving himself with another pull at the bottle, he turned down the lamp until the room was in semi-darkness. Again he stepped to the door and, holding it open an inch or two, listened.

Satisfied, he returned to the bed and picked up the dead form of Hansen and threw it across his shoulder with a mighty effort. He extinguished the lamp with a single puff as he passed the table.

Then, feeling his way carefully with his feet lest he strike against some piece of furniture in the darkness, he sought the door.

Bending his body against the force of the wind, he gained the steps and dodged around the corner of the house opposite the blacks’ quarters. At the edge of the cocoanut grove, he again paused to listen.

Not a sound came from the direction of the black barracks. Presently, beating against the wind, he see-sawed through the grove for a quarter of a mile.

Satisfied that he was far enough from the house, he dropped his ghastly burden to the ground and turned back. The storm would obliterate his tracks by morning. With the coming of daylight, he would give the alarm, as if he had just discovered the absence of Hansen.

He had gone over the whole thing in his mind as he struggled along. It would be easy enough to foist his story upon the simple-minded blacks. He would tell them that the sick man had gotten up in the night and wandered away. Fevers are common in the Islands: so, too, is delirium. And, when the body was found with the arrow in the skull, they would believe that their master had fallen a victim to some wandering savage.

There were half a dozen runaways--deserters from the plantation--hiding back in the bush, afraid to go into the hills for fear of the ferocious hill men and, at the same time, fearful of the punishment certain to be meted out to them should they return to the plantation. One of them would be blamed for Hansen’s death. The blacks would vouch for such a story when he told it to Donaldson and Svensen upon their arrival.

He had covered a small part of the distance back to the house, his head bent low in thought, when a rustling among the palms at his right caused him to turn suddenly. As he did so, a spear whizzed past his head, imbedding itself in the tree beside him.

Whirling, he drew his revolver and pumped the clip of shells in the direction from which the spear had been thrown. It was too dark to make for good shooting; and an instant later a flash of lightning showed him a naked figure dodging behind a tree in the distance. Too late, he realized that he had left the house without an extra clip of cartridges. Unarmed, he broke into a run, dodging here and there among the long avenues of trees until he reached the edge of the grove.

The blacks were already tumbling out of their quarters, chattering excitedly.

“Ornburi!” he snapped at one of the houseboys. “You tell ’m fella boys sick marster, him run away. Got devil-devil in head. Me go after him. Meet bad black fella. Black fella kill him mebbe. You look. You catch ’m black fella, plenty _kai-kai_ in morning, no work, plenty tobacco--plenty everything!”

As Ornburi stepped forward, proud of being singled out from among his fellows, and explained to the late comers what had happened, Kimball dashed back up the steps and into the house. Returning an instant later with his rifle and bandolier of cartridges, he found the blacks arming themselves with their native weapons, squealing and chattering their glee at the prospect of the man-hunt and the holiday to follow in case of their success.