Chapter VII: Front Matter (7)

“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.