Chapter X: Front Matter (10)

He arose abruptly with a sharp curse, and tore up what he had written. Then he turned off both gas jets, then turned them on full, and then lay down upon the cot in a corner of the room....

It was perhaps some twenty minutes before his body began to twitch convulsively.

“Lily May!” he murmured huskily. Then more hoarsely still, “Lily May--forgive--Lily May!”

... His body was writhing and twisting horribly now. His hands were clutching at the air, at his clothing, at the mattress; his legs were contracting and relaxing spasmodically. His face turned purple; he choked and gasped.

“Lily May!” he cried in a stifling whisper, and attempted to lift his arms.

But he could not, and his lips ceased moving and his head fell back, and he lay very still.

SECOND EPISODE.

When the deadly gas fumes reached the youth on the cot he turned over on his back, threw his arms out, and breathed long and deeply of the poisoned air.

His head throbbed and pounded; his heart pumped madly; his eyes started from their sockets. Yet still he lay with outstretched arms, inhaling evenly and steadily.

Then everything within him seemed to warp and become distorted and askew. His veins tied themselves in knots. His blood choked and clogged. An awful weight crushed and crunched his breast.

But he set his teeth and clenched his fists, and continued to gulp in the murderous air.

Then he felt himself dropping, gently, gently--down, down, down--as though invisible hands were lowering him into some bottomless, pitch black cavern.

But suddenly there burst upon his vision a dazzling golden light, and far above him he saw a blazing throne, sparkling and flashing with a strange brilliancy, and on the throne a girl, her hair undone, her body clothed in a virginal robe. And she gazed down upon him with eyes full of sadness and reproach. And he tried to call out to her, and tried to lift his arms to her....

And the fiendish darkness swept all away and closed in upon him and crushed him, and he knew no more.

THIRD EPISODE.

Eons of time had passed.

All was impenetrable blackness. With incredible velocity, he was whizzing through infinite space. Nothing supported him; nothing touched him. Some unseen, unfelt, unthinkable Force was hurling him outward into a Stygian, unbounded void.

Then, so gradually that it was scarcely perceptible, the blackness was dyed a pallid, ghastly hue. And with a shocking suddenness it became alive with a horrible larvae. Bloodless and transparent things, they seemed, filling the air with a swarming, wriggling magnitude of loathsome life. And he was a part of this!

He put out his hand; and though he felt no touch, he saw the squirming mass of worms pass through his flesh as though nothing were there. And he knew his body swarmed with them as though it were decayed cheese, and an unspeakable, revolting nausea surged through him.

Then the paleness vanished, and the larvae with it, and he was still shooting through the horrible darkness.

* * * * *

Another eon had passed.

Nor had his terrible flight abated. Outward, through unlighted infinitude, he swept untiringly. Unearthly sounds now filled the air--voices screaming in agony, cries and moans as of tortured souls, insane laughter and maniacal shrieks. Anon, with a howl and a hiss, some shrieking air dragon would roar past him. And, all around, he could hear the bellow and screech of monsters of the air in terrible conflict.

Then all turned to an ocean of living blood; and great crimson bellows belched over him, wave upon horrid wave. And the frightful aerial mammals, invisible a moment before, were now seen leaping and plunging through that scarlet sea.

Under him and over him they ducked and bounded--gigantic, green-hued monsters extravagantly hideous. Now and again one would dart for him, mouth distended. But the next second he would be far away, with the ghastly creature in hopeless pursuit.

Slowly the liquid redness merged into a shimmering rainbow of vivid colors. Yellow and green, and purple and blue and orange, streaked the air with a prismatic glory, glittering and scintillating with a marvelous beauty.

Then, with a terrific suddenness, like a noiseless thunderclap, the blackness rushed in and blotted out the dazzling iridescence, and cloaked all in Cimmerian darkness.

FOURTH EPISODE.

Another eon.

So far away it seemed a distant star, the lone traveler through the infinite Void discerned a dull red glow. Larger and larger it grew as he soared toward it with lightning velocity.

And now it seemed a great mass of flameless fire, shedding its cold rays for millions of miles. With every second it grew in size until it was come to inconceivable proportion. And then it seemed to shrivel up, and turn ashen and wrinkled, and become as a dead and crumbling sun.

But suddenly the husk burst open, and the wayfarer described, dimly at first, what seemed the outermost rim of some gorgeous, primeval world.

Awhile it was as though he were watching it from afar off; but he traversed thousands of leagues in as many seconds, and swiftly it took definite shape as he flew nearer and yet nearer.

And then his journey through illimitable space was at an end, and he had alighted upon this unknown world, and was wandering through a dense jungle of some marvelous fungus that attained a wondrous height.

Seemingly without his own volition, he at length found himself lying on a verdant mound overlooking a vast tropical morass that reached off on all sides into endless vista.

And while he lay there he witnessed in that untracked wilderness a diabolical spectacle appalling as hell itself!

Grisly, indescribable Things--satyrs and ogres and demons and fiends--appeared in countless numbers, and held orgies that were Madness intensified. Now they were reveling and cavorting in wanton abandon; anon battling among themselves in murderous ferocity.

After a time he viewed a sight still more horrible. Off to the right, he saw a monstrous snake’s head, as huge as the body of a hippopotamus, rise up from the swamp and gaze on ravenously at the riotous revel.

An instant later the licentious carousal was become wildest terror. The forest was alive with frightful reptiles--gigantic, stupendous things that passed the extent of all imagination. Down they swooped upon their terrified prey, their enormous, slippery bodies undulating in great writhing leaps.

The horde of unearthly Things, disporting in hellish debauchery a moment before, were swiftly swallowed up by the serpents. Left in possession of the swamp, they flopped about venomously for a time, demolishing and laying waste all about them.

They then fell upon one another in unspeakable combat, wriggling and squirming slimily together, their repulsive, green-black lengths intertwined like enormous angle worms. And they killed and devoured each other, until at last there was left but one hideous, swollen monster.

It leaped and dashed about, lashing its great tail furiously, tearing down giant trees as though they were weeds. And as the young man watched, the incredible thing seemed to swell larger and larger. And then he saw it stop suddenly in its Brobdingnagian gambol and rigidly poise its hideous head. And he looked straight into its horrifying eyes!

They were fixed steadily upon him. But a moment it staid thus; then its head dropped, and he saw its mammoth body undulating swiftly toward him through the swamp.

He strove to cry out, but could utter no sound. He tried to move, but his body was as lead.

On came the thing with frightful rapidity; parts of its writhing length now sinking in the quagmire, now towering high above it. Now he could see that massive head swinging from side to side. Now only a dark, slimy greenish mass, describing an arch above the swamp, showed its location.

Now it was close upon him. Its vast head swooped up a scant distance away. Its fulsome eyes blazed upon him with a furious fire. Its great drooping jaws swung open. They bristled with venomous fangs.

The monster gathered itself in a dozen gigantic coils and lept through the air--

“GOD!” he shrieked.

“There, there,” soothed a tender voice. “Don’t excite yourself. You’ll be all right presently. Just remain quiet, that’s all.”

A cool hand was laid gently upon his brow. He looked up at the young nurse who sat beside his cot.

Without saying a word, he stared for quite a long time at her face, until her cheeks were as crimson as the ribbon at her throat. When at length he spoke, he was half laughing, half sobbing, and the syntax of his utterance would scarcely have delighted a professor of English at Harvard University.

“Well, I’ve been, girl,” said he. “Got a round trip ticket. But never, never again. What’d you run away for? Yep, I’ve had my fill; no more metaphysics. _Phew!_ Such reptiles! Big as this room, some of ’em. I looked three years, and it ran me crazy. _Ugh!_ those snakes and lizards. Hired detectives, too, but it was no use. And I thought it was all sunshine and flowers and sweet music. You won’t run away again, will you? Could you get me a little brandy, Lily May? I’m feeling a bit faint.”

LAST EPISODE.

The young man made a mistake about the newspapers. One inch was all he got, tucked snugly between a patent medicine advertisement and the notice of a sheriff’s sale. It read:

“An unidentified youth attempted to take his life in a North Side rooming-house last night by inhaling gas. The landlady smelled the odor of gas and called the police. Miss Lily May Kettering, a nurse at the National Emergency Hospital, who seems to know the young man, although refusing to divulge his identity, reports that he is on the road to recovery.”

_There’s an Eerie Thrill in_

_The_ Scarlet Night

_By_ WILLIAM SANFORD

Dr. Langley was in love with my wife.

This had been very evident to me for many weeks. Also it was most evident to me that his love was entirely reciprocated.

The doctor was a young and handsome fellow, who bore the reputation of being more or less unscrupulous. An unpleasant story had followed him from another city--the story of the drowning of a young girl. Although the coroner’s verdict had been that of accidental drowning, there were those, it was said, who thought that the doctor knew much more of the matter than had been brought to light, and rumor had it that he had left the place because he was no longer popular there.

The doctor had a pleasing personality, however, and a way with him that had the effect of disarming any prejudice against him. He was, in brief, a ladies’ man, possessing all of the little attentions and flatteries so dear to the heart of women. And he gave them all with a subtle manner of sincerity that made them doubly potent.

The doctor’s practice was fairly large, and he had also succeeded in having himself appointed local medical examiner for our town. He was deeply interested in his chosen profession, and still fascinated by the dissecting-room. He owned a handsome touring-car with which, as I knew, my wife was very familiar.

My wife was twenty-five--fifteen years my junior--pretty and with much charm of manner, yet possessed of a certain hardness of nature and lack of sympathy for the suffering of others, unusual in a young woman of good breeding. She came of excellent family, was well educated and always had associated with good people.

I had been somewhat addicted to strong drink before we were married, but had managed to keep it from her to a certain extent. She knew that I drank, but thought that it was no more than many men do at their clubs. Of my several wild sprees out of town she had never heard.

We had been married two years when Dr. Langley took up his practice in our town, and from the moment he made a professional call on my wife, for some minor ailment, they had become intensely interested in each other.

My drinking habits had increased, rather than diminished, since my marriage, and I no longer made any effort to keep occasional lurid fits of intoxication from her. My love for liquor became as much a part of my life as food or sleep. My position as assistant manager in a large wholesale house was fairly secure, however, and one not easy to fill, which perhaps accounted for the firm still holding me.

One cold, bleak evening in November, while I was playing cards at my club--and, thanks to the rum-runners who thrived in our town, drinking whisky--I heard a strangely-familiar voice call my name in greeting, and, looking up, I was overjoyed to behold an old friend of bygone days, whom I had not seen in several years. He had dropped off on his way to another city.

The time was ripe for a celebration in honor of our meeting. My friend produced a quart flask of whisky from his suitcase, saying that it was the duplicate of one he had already sampled, and spoke to me of its age, strength, fine quality, and the high price he had been obliged to pay for it. Thereupon he presented it to me. I thanked him heartily and opened the flask, and we all drank a couple of rounds from it. All of that day, and the day previous, I had been drinking more or less heavily.

Cards were resumed and we played until after midnight, when, with many a handshake, I bade good-by to my friend, who was obliged to catch a train to reach his destination the following noon. The card game being broken up, we had a farewell round of drinks, and I stumbled out into the night.

The cool air soon revived my somewhat befuddled brain. Also, I was soon shaking with the cold. Remembering the generous sized flask of whisky in my pocket, the gift of my friend, I uncorked it and took a long drink, rejoicing in the fact that the bottle was still almost two-thirds full.

Reaching home, I went at once to my bedroom. My wife was seated in a chair by the window in her dressing-gown. As I entered, she rose and, without any preliminaries of speech, she asked that I at once give her a divorce so that she might marry Dr. Langley. She said there was no reason why I should not do this, since I might then marry some woman who cared for me, and that she would be happy with the man she had learned to love.

The abruptness of her request, together with the cold, matter-of-fact way in which she put it dumfounded me, but, hastily regaining my composure, I flatly refused any such action, told my wife that she must remain true to her marriage vows, and that nothing would ever induce me to give her the divorce she wanted. Furthermore, I told her that the doctor was a scoundrel--that many people believed he had murdered a girl before coming to our town.

At this, my wife became livid with fury, accused me of deliberately besmirching the doctor’s character because of jealousy, and declared she would never live with me again.

The next day, however, she seemed much changed. She was very agreeable, even tender, to me. We walked about the little garden of our home, as we had often done in the early days of our marriage, and I felt confident that she had decided to put the doctor out of her mind and allow our married life to go on as usual.

We chatted pleasantly together at the dinner table that evening, and as usual I drank a cup of strong coffee after the meal.

A few moments later a heavy drowsiness came over me and I knew no more....

* * * * *

I awoke with a feeling of suffocation--as if a thousand tons of weight were resting on my chest.

I gasped for breath. I was suffering torture. All about me was blackness--impenetrable blackness. I moved my hands and encountered boards, above and on every side. Gradually, to my numbed senses, the horrible realization came to me, and the cold sweat started out on my body--_I had been buried alive!_

The terrible realization had a tendency to clear my mind somewhat, in spite of the difficulty I encountered in breathing. I saw it all now. My wife had given me some powerful drug in my coffee, a drug obtained from the doctor. They had planned and plotted the thing in case I refused to consent to a divorce.

They probably had known I was still alive when I was buried. The doctor, as medical examiner, had filed some fictitious report of death from natural causes, and they had contrived to have a hasty funeral. How I had managed to breathe for so long in the coffin, while under the power of the drug, I did not know. Now that I was fully conscious again I felt myself stifling.

No power of imagination can picture the horror and torture of mind that my terrible predicament forced upon me. I must die a slow, terrible death, while those who were responsible for the hellish crime enjoyed themselves and went unpunished. The minutes seemed to drag into hours, as I lay there struggling for breath.

Suddenly, out of the horrible black stillness, I heard a noise above me. Listening, with every racked nerve on edge, I heard it come nearer--nearer. At first I could not make it out--could not understand--and then, suddenly, the truth dawned upon me with a horrible intensity: _The body snatchers were after me for the dissecting-room!_

I tried to cry out, but was unable to make a sound, because of my stifling condition. They reached the coffin, and I heard the shovel scraping against it. Then I felt myself being slowly lifted upward, and the coffin was dumped on the ground.

Now I heard a voice, and my blood ran cold, _for it was the voice of Dr. Langley_.

“The drug was an Oriental one,” he was saying. “It causes a semblance of death that lasts a long time, but he probably died a few minutes after he was buried. I am anxious to dissect to see what effect such a drug has on the human body!”

And then, with a terrible shock, I heard the voice of my wife:

“I don’t care. Do as you wish. I hated him from the moment he refused to give me a divorce. I could even watch you cut up his body!”

I struggled to rise in the coffin, gasping for the breath of life, and then the lid was pried off, and, summoning all my dying strength, I rose to my feet, waving my arms wildly back and forth and inhaling a great breath of life-giving night air.

The doctor let the shovel fall to the ground without a word, and staggered back and sank to his knees, while my wife gave a hideous scream of terror. Then she snatched a knife from his kit of dissecting instruments and drew the razor-sharp blade across her throat. She then threw herself upon the prostrate doctor, her blood drenching his body.

My senses reeling, I staggered forward, tripped over my coffin and fell swooning to the ground.

* * * * *

None believe my story. Neither will you. I have told it to them all, but they will not believe it.

I am in a hospital, where they tell me I have been for several days. It is a prison hospital, where guards in uniform patrol the corridors, lest even the sick try to escape.

They ask me if I cannot remember that I came home that night from the club in a blind frenzy of drink and found my wife and Dr. Langley together. They tell me that I choked him with such ferocity and strength that my fingers broke into the flesh of his neck. They tell me that my wife, screaming with terror, tried to escape, and that, just as the people in the adjoining apartment burst into the room, I seized a razor from the bureau and slashed her throat from ear to ear, and threw her body, with the blood streaming from the wound, across that of the doctor.

Are they going to hang me for this double crime that I did not commit?

They will not believe my story. Yet every detail of it is as clear to me as the stars that shine in the heavens.

_Read of the Frightful Thing
That Came from_

_The_
Extraordinary
Experiment _of_
Dr. Calgroni

_By_ Joseph Faus and James Bennett Wooding

There is much concerning the queer Dr. Calgroni that I can not give to the world.

It should be remembered that I had never been inside his house until after I beheld him frantically emerge from its big front door, that rainy night, his wizened face as white as death, and, scantily-clad, rush headlong for the depot.

That he was a surgeon of extraordinary ability I readily acknowledge. But Belleville was the last place where one would expect to find a man of such surgical skill, and, most undoubtedly, the last place one would choose for the scene of the startling events brought about as a result of the doctor’s purchase of the ape “Horace” from Barber’s World-famous 3-Ring Show.

Had the doctor merely put up at the hotel I might have believed him, like myself, merely summering at Belleville. For it was a restful hamlet, situated in a mountainous valley, something like a day’s run from New York. But his renting of the Thornsdale place aroused latent suspicions in my mind, probably instilled there by that strange article I had read in _The Surgical Monthly_.

Large enough for a hotel or boarding-house, but out-of-the-way located--also because of the enormous rent demanded by its heirs--the Thornsdale place had stood vacant since the last of the Thornsdale line had died ten years before. Its doors had been closed and padlocked, and its windows barricaded.

It had been the finest residence in the old town in its day, but was now regarded as a sort of historic oddity. On the whole, it afforded a formidable appearance, crouching behind its great elms, looming huge and weather-beaten, with its board-shuttered and frowning windows. But just the sort of place the eccentric Dr. Calgroni could work in, unmolested.

I saw the peculiar doctor one morning as I was leaving the small post office. It was just after train time, and many of the villagers were loitering about the place, among them a young man named Jason Murdock.

Murdock was of that type one always hears of in a small community--the village “devil.” He came of a good family, and had plenty of money and all that: but had succeeded, despite rich heritage-blood, in igniting more fire and brimstone than all five of the village preachers had in their imagination conceived. He was coarsely good-looking, and big and husky.

Aristocratic hoodlum though he was, all rather secretly admired the fellow, probably because he injected “pep” into the lazy old town.

I beheld Jason Murdock pointing to a shriveled-up figure of a little man, stooped of shoulder.

“There he goes--that Dr. Can-groanee, who’s movin’ into the Thornsdale place. I wonder if there’s any good liquor in his cellar? That old Thornsdale dump has a good wine cellar.”

Dr. Calgroni paid not the slightest attention to Jason’s insolent babble, but walked hurriedly along, his clean-shaven, dried-up countenance turning neither to the right nor left.

“Who is that man?” I asked the postmaster, who had now come to the door for air.

“I dunno, excepting his mail is addressed Dr.--I’ll have to spell it--C-A-L-G-R-O-N-I--and it is mostly foreign, out of Vienna, forwarded here from New York.”

“Sort of a man of mystery, eh?” I hazarded.

“I should say he’s sort of a fool for rentin’ that old Thornsdale rat-trap, for God-knows-what, that’s stood vacant these ten years.”

I nodded and left in the direction taken by the doctor.

Here was an element of mystery; for I alone, of all the villagers, knew that this eminent surgeon’s presence in Belleville boded ill.

* * * * *

I soon caught sight of the doctor. For a man of his age and physique, his gait was exceedingly fast--as though propelled by a nervous dynamo.

Stretching my legs, I kept a safe distance between him and myself, until he swung open the tall wooden gate and quickly vanished through the wilderness of tall bushes and low trees into the Thornsdale house. I halted safe from observation and lighted my pipe.

Leaning against a tree there, I ran over in my mind the odd significance of that remarkable article I had recently read in the staid and ever-authentic _Surgical Monthly_.

This Dr. Calgroni, it appeared, had stated to the interviewer that he was here from Austria on a vacation--and to feel out the opinions of American surgeons anent his new theory. One _Herr_ von Meine, a noted surgeon of Vienna, he added with some asperity, had scoffed at the absurdity and unorthodox idea of the unprecedented theory advanced by him, and had declared that his, Calgroni’s, operation was extremely impossible, not to say foolish--that it would never be a success.

Dr. Calgroni claimed that he could prolong a human life indefinitely by the insertion of a live thigh gland from a young quadrumanous mammal, such as the _Pithecoid_.

Much discussion and argument had been provoked throughout the entire medical world by the famous doctor’s theory, and consensus was that he was an impracticable theorist gone mad.

And now here was Dr. Calgroni, living in the quiet little town of Belleville, where none was aware of his sensational hypothesis, renting this immense old ramshackle place, and his remarkable intent known to no one but himself.

I had taken a seat on a tree stump, in front of the gate, which had a ring stapled to it, used in former days as a hitching-post. Time hung heavily upon me in Belleville, but this new element of mystery promised some possible interest and excitement.

Having sat there until my pipe was empty and cold, I was aroused by the noise of the gate opening behind me, followed by the _tap-tap_ of a hammer. I turned.

There stood the doctor in his shirt sleeves, tacking a sign to the gate post. Crudely painted in black on white cardboard I read:

_POSITIVELY NO ADMITTANCE!_

_Anyone entering here does
so at his own risk._

_T. Calgroni._

Without even casting a glance my way, the doctor closed the gate behind him and seemed about to depart up the weed-grown gravel walk, when, glancing down the dusky street, he checked himself.

My gaze followed the direction of his eyes. A wagon was approaching. It drew up at the stump and halted. Loaded with big boxes, the mules were sweating after the pull. Their surly-faced driver stopped twenty feet away and turned to the doctor:

“I know I’m late,” I overheard him grumble, “but I handled the boxes carefully as you said. Shall I drive in?”

“You’d better,” returned Calgroni in crisp English, still not noticing me. “And remember, if there’s a thing broken not a cent do you get.” And he wheeled up the path.

“Dam’ him!” swore the teamster, turning to me. “Did you ever see such an old crab?”

“Glass inside the boxes?” I suggested.

The fellow looked at me suspiciously then his lips contracted like a vise and he turned to his mules. I watched him drive through the wagon gate, and on up through the moss-covered trees to the house.

_II._

The next morning I arose early, with the intention of strolling past the old Thornsdale place. I found Main Street lifeless, except for two men busily engaged in posting up the glaring announcement of the coming of:

“BARBER’S WORLD-FAMOUS
3-RING SHOW”

Pausing, I watched them swab the long multi-hued strips of paper with their paste brush and sling them upon the billboard. A small crowd of big-eyed youngsters and loafers gradually congregated about the busy circus advance men.

The most glaring and conspicuous poster represented two gorillas peering angrily out from behind the bars of their cage. Beneath it was lithographed in huge, red letters:

“MIMMIE AND HORACE
ONLY WILD GORILLAS IN
CAPTIVITY!”

I turned to leave--and, momentarily startled, faced what seemed to be one of the gorillas at large! Only it wore clothes. Gazing at the poster with a look of blank curiosity, was a man, short in stature, immense of shoulder and deep of chest, his hair thatching his forehead almost to his bushy eyebrows. He was hideous to look upon. I recognized him, though, after an instant, as the village half-wit, known as “Simple Will.”

I had seen him before, a poor, weak-minded creature, wandering helplessly about the village, pitied, but spurned except when someone needed the help of powerful hands and a strong back.

Drooling and muttering, Will followed the circus men as they started off.

I idly strolled down the first street; then, reaching the outskirts of town, I found myself in the rear of the Thornsdale place. To my surprise, I beheld another warning notice similar to the one that Dr. Calgroni had tacked to his front gate last evening. Not only in one but many places, on trees and the high fence, I saw the warning signs of “No Trespassing.” The doctor himself was nowhere to be seen.

A week slipped by and nothing happened further than gossip concerning the queer doctor. Occasionally Dr. Calgroni, in person, purchased supplies and called for his mail. Although I contrived to be near him whenever possible, he seldom uttered more than half a dozen words--and never to me. Once, though, I thought I caught him peering surreptitiously at me in a queer manner.

Obviously, the doctor was his own servant, housekeeper and cook. No one took the risk of entering his place--not even the daring Jason Murdock.

Several days before the circus arrived, I noticed what I considered a peculiarly significant happening--Dr. Calgroni walking toward his abode, with Simple Will tagging, doglike, a few paces behind.

At discreet distance, I followed them. Arriving at the Thornsdale place, I was surprised to see the doctor close the gate behind him, leaving Will standing outside. The half-wit stood there until Dr. Calgroni disappeared.

The day before the show came, I saw the doctor clapping Will on the shoulder and talking to him.

That night such a terrible conclusion shaped itself in my mind as to the meaning of the singular boxes, the hostile notices, Will’s attitude toward the doctor, and the latter’s interest in him, that it kept me wide awake.

In ill humor at myself, I rose at the first appearance of the sun. Remembering the circus, I strolled over to the tracks to watch it unload.

Some villagers had gathered about the few wretched travel-scarred cars that made up the second-rate circus train, and particularly in front of the car containing the cage of Mimmie and Horace.

Doctor Calgroni was there, and, at his heels, Simple Will. The doctor was talking very earnestly to the trainer.

“You say Mr. Barber has offered to sell either of these animals,” the doctor was saying, as I drew up on the outer fringe of the curious crowd.

“Yes sir. He will sell one because they fight continually. They have to be carefully watched, or they might kill each other. You don’t know what ferocious beasts gorillas are--”

The doctor smiled.

“I would like to talk to Mr. Barber,” he interposed.

The gorilla trainer hesitated, then, pulling shut the sliding doors of the animal car:

“Sure; just follow me,” he said.

The doctor, at the man’s side, walked to a coach ahead, the combination ticket-and-executive office of the Barber Shows. For an instant, Simple Will seemed to hesitate, but he didn’t trail Dr. Calgroni--the unseen things inside of the gigantic cage nearby seemed to hold his hypnotic attention. Several big drops of rain splashed upon the cinder-strewn ground. The heavens hung black and dismal; the sun had completely vanished.

I watched Simple Will. He was ill-at-ease, hovering uneasily about the gorillas’ car. The other people nearby paid no attention to the half-wit. Presently the trainer and Dr. Calgroni returned, accompanied by another man, who was counting a roll of bills.

“You say,” the latter remarked as they passed me, “that you want ‘Horace’ delivered at once?”

“Yes,” replied the doctor concisely.

“All right. Hank, call the gang, unload the cage and put Horace in that red single cage. Dr. Calgroni has relieved us of him!”

At this, Simple Will approached the surgeon and touched his sleeve.

“You buy hairy animal-man?” he mumbled.

The doctor laid his blue-veined and thin old hand upon Will’s broad shoulder.

“Yes, Will, and I’m going to give you a job--a job as his valet!” The show men exchanged winks, and from the car rolled an empty, iron-barred cage. Will’s expressionless features twisted into what on his idiot countenance registered pleasure.

Dr. Calgroni beckoned to the man whom I had seen deliver the strange-appearing boxes that first afternoon.

“Got your team?”

The fellow nodded.

A scene of bustle had sprung up about me. An excited and larger crowd of villagers had assembled.

The big cage containing Mimmie and Horace was lowered to the track side. They were two of the finest animals of their type I have ever looked upon.

Horace was transferred to the single cage and its strong door doubly padlocked upon him. The mule team drew up with the wagon.

“Here, Will,” said the doctor to the half-wit, “climb into the wagon. We’re going before we get wet.” The doctor appeared highly elated.

Simple Will, who had stood by as if in a stupor, swung his heavy body up behind the gorilla’s cage.

No sooner had the wagon drawn out of sight than the heavens seemed to loosen in wrath. Rain fell in torrents, driving the spectators in a wild rush for shelter. As I reached the hotel, the water dripping from my drenched garments, the storm increased its fury. All that day it rained--and the next.

As I lay on my bed that night and listened to the roar of wind and rain beating upon the roof and window panes, my mind kept drifting to the inmates of Thornsdale place--the queer doctor, Simple Will and his ward, Horace, the gigantic gorilla.

_III._

It was three days later that I learned Dr. Calgroni had wired to New York, and on the next morning an exceptionally well-dressed stranger, whose goatee, bearing and satchel smacked of a medical man, stepped off the train.

Espying me, he asked:

“Will you kindly direct me to the Thornsdale place?”

I told him the best way to reach Dr. Calgroni’s without wading in mud, and he departed, with a brief “Thank You.”

The next night I saw the stranger, ashen of face and decidedly inwardly shaken, hurriedly purchase a ticket and leave on the 9:45 train for New York.

Immediately I sought the telegraph dispatcher.

“You are aware of the queer actions of Dr. Calgroni--”

“I should say! He’s a nut.”

“I can’t say as to that, but to whom did he send the message the other night?”

“You won’t let it out I tipped you off?”

I solemnly held up my right hand.

“Well,” in a whisper, “he wired a hospital for their best surgical man.”

So the assistant had gone back, frightened. And why?

Several weeks later Barber’s World-famous 3-Ring Show gave a return exhibition at Belleville. That night I wandered toward the Thornsdale place.

Again the clouds had banked for a storm, fitful rays of the moon now and then shifting through, only to be absorbed in mist.

Drawing around in front of the old homestead, looming dark behind the gloom-shadowed trees, I seated myself on the stump hitching-post. I was glad that in my coat pocket nestled a neat automatic. Why I lingered there in front of the quiet old place I do not know. Not a light glimmered in the house; not a noise issued from its muffled depths.

Then to my ears came a shriek and to my startled gaze a light flared in the house. I could dimly see that a figure appeared at its open door. It looked behind it for an instant, then madly bolted toward me.

Upon the wet gravel came the tread of rapidly-moving feet, and the gate in front of me swung abruptly back. In the hazy reflected light, I got one look at Dr. Calgroni who, hat and raincoat in his hands, the muscles of his face quivering, his face deathly pale, emerged and turned, running madly toward town.

I drew back, automatic in hand, waiting for whatever might follow the doctor. Nothing happened. Obeying an impulse, I took out after the fleeing surgeon. Over soggy soil I followed him, around corners, down Main Street to the depot. I got there in time to see him swing on the platform of the rear coach of the 9:45 train, bound for New York.

Throbbing with excitement, scarce knowing what I was doing, I made my way back toward the Thornsdale place. Several blocks away, I caught a glimpse of a broad-shouldered, thick-set disheveled figure in breech-clout, running--or, rather, prancing and hopping--toward the circus grounds. The automatic in my hand, I followed.

A block from the circus grounds, under the street lamp, I saw a figure on horseback that I recognized as Jason Murdock, evidently bound for home.

Then, snarling, the Thing I had seen hopped out from behind a tree trunk, on all fours. Gaining its hind feet, it made a flying leap at Jason, knocking him from his horse. On the ground they rolled, the powerful Jason helpless in the Thing’s clutch. Its fingers closed chokingly about the man’s throat.

I tried to shoot, only to find my gun jammed; tried to shout, and could not.

At that instant the brass band struck up “There’ll Be A Hot Time In The Old Town Tonight!” As the quick, dancing strains smote the night air, the Thing suddenly ceased in the act of strangling Jason, looking attentively up. There seemed to be a responsive, obedient look on its horrible countenance. I could see its wild-eyes and bearded face--God! _It was Simple Will!_

Bounding first on all fours, then half-upright on his feet, the crazed idiot was making for the show grounds just as the clouds broke in a downpour. To the rear of the big tent bounded Will, as the crowd scattered for home.

As if familiar with his surrounding, he made for a side-show tent in front of which sputtered a gas torch. The crowd, fleeing in the rain, had in the confusion failed to see the half-wit and myself on the mad run. But several men were following me, as Will tore aside the entrance flaps.

Inside, poorly-lighted though it was, I could plainly see the cage of Mimmie, the female-gorilla. Her trainer turned at the noise of our entrance, and hastily reached for his knife-pointed pole--but too late. Uttering a cry, piercing and antagonistic, Will flung himself at Mimmie’s cage, who, with an answering cry of battle, reached both her long hairy arms through her cage, clawing and tearing at the fiercely struggling man on the outside.

The trainer rushed in with his prong, thrusting it at Mimmie. For an instant she drew back; then several of us quickly pulled Will, bleeding profusely, back from the enraged animal, who again lurched forward as though recognizing in Will the reincarnation of her mate, Horace.

Foaming at the mouth, Will sank limply to the floor. From the hue of the blood, ebbing from the side of his neck, I saw at a glance that he was done for--Mimmie’s claws had severed his jugular vein.

Among the men who had helped me thrust the poor fellow out of Mimmie’s reach, was the sheriff of the county.

“What does this mean?” he demanded, grasping my shoulders.

“Follow me!” I cried.

A crowd of excited men, headed by the sheriff and myself, made for the Thornsdale place. The light still dimly illuminated the hall through the open door.

“I’ll go in first, sheriff,” I offered. “Have your men surround the place.”

I stole into the hall. A terrible stench greeted me. I found it came from a door opening out into the hall. A feeble light burned within. About me stood several boxes, with the sides torn open, and excelsior hanging and strewn about them.

Before me, completely assembled in every detail, stood what the boxes had contained--an operating table and all its many surgical accessories. Out of a long box in the corner sprawled the hairy limbs of the fast-decaying Horace, the male gorilla.

Taking a small oil lamp from the stand, I turned to examine the dead body; and I noticed a paper, which fell to the floor. A quick look at the side of the beast’s head revealed a great gash, rottening at the edges, through which, it was evident, the brain had been removed.

I hastily recalled Dr. Calgroni’s theories. Could it be--

My eyes chanced to drop to the floor. Holding forth the lamp, I saw there was handwriting on the bit of paper.

I picked it up and read the note, which, even at the last stand, Calgroni had directed to _me_, Von Meine, chief disparager of his wild theories:

“_Herr Von Meine, of Vienna, you said I could not do it. You berated me for my endeavors to alleviate the distress of the insane and feeble-minded. Yet I know now that I have accomplished it, without killing the subject as you claimed would be the result of such an operation. That’s why I followed you here, to show you! It was successful, Von Meine. I could tell by the way his eyes looked into mine, when he finally came to. But I could see the brain I had substituted for Will’s atrophied one was too vigorous--that expression didn’t belong to Simple Will. I am fleeing before he gains his strength. I admit my fear; for after this operation the former half-wit will be a dangerous customer, with the too vigorous and ferocious brain of the Gorilla Horace in his head!_”

Ten Pallbearers For This Mammoth Woman

When Mrs. Martha Carmas, of Middle Village, Queensboro, New York, died of elephantiasis, ten men were required to carry her body from the hospital to Lutz Church for funeral services. She weighed 710 pounds. A special coffin of immense size was made for the body. Mrs. Carmas was only thirty-three years of age, and, until she contracted the dreadful elephantiasis, she was not unusually heavy.

Woman Starves Herself To Feed Cats

In a mean neighborhood in New York City dwelt Mary Bosanti, the “Cat Woman.” The neighbors gave her that name because of her excessive love for cats. All the cats in that part of town seemed to be attracted to her house. Every day she went to the corner grocery and bought six quarts of milk, which she carried back to her room. Twenty or more cats always tagged at her heels, and when she spoke to them in a lowered tone they seemed to know what she said. They obeyed her every command. Then, one morning, a neighbor heard groans issuing from the “Cat Woman’s” room and called the other tenants of the house. They broke the door in--and found the “Cat Woman” starving, surrounded by a great swarm of cats and more than 200 empty milk bottles.

_Here’s a “Creepy” Tale That
Ends In a Shuddering,
Breath-taking Way_

_The_ Return _of_
Paul Slavsky

_By_ Capt. George Warburton Lewis

_Author of_ “Trailing the Jungle Man,” “Wine of the Wilderness,” Etc.

From Petrograd came Paul Slavsky, with what his Nihilist associates might have styled a clean record and no bungled jobs, but what Larry Brandon classified as a criminal record _de luxe_.

It was natural that such a record should bring about Slavsky’s early acquaintance with Inspector Brandon, of the Central Office and it followed, as day follows dawn, that the Terrorist should become the object of the shrewdest surveillance the Chief Inspector could design.

Whether Paul Slavsky actually discovered, or merely suspected, that he was being shadowed, matters little. A notation on an old blotter shows that he boldly attempted to pave the way for future criminal enterprises by calling at the Central Office in the role of a persecuted citizen, who had journeyed here from his native land to escape the hell which he declared the Russian Secret Police had made his life.

It took three months of intensive investigation to convince Larry Brandon that Slavsky was all the Secret Police had painted him and more, and that the Terrorist had not emigrated to America with even the remotest intention of reforming. It took the detective three months more to satisfy himself beyond all doubt that Slavsky had, marvelously enough, established an active branch of his old order and was undoubtedly spreading the doctrine of Gorgias and Fichte under the very noses of the Central Office experts. However, the evidence necessary to a conviction was lacking, so nothing could be done.

A little later the men of the same nationality as the Nihilist, whom Brandon had used to great advantage on the case, began, one by one, to drop quietly out of existence. This was not only mysterious--it was uncanny. Finally the decomposed bodies of some of these operatives were found and unmistakably identified.

In each instance _the head had been completely severed from the trunk_.

Recollecting that the Terrorist order, to which Paul Slavsky had belonged, had signalized its outrages by decapitating its victims, Brandon was enabled to initiate definite plans which, in due course, culminated in his running his man to earth.

But Paul Slavsky never beheld the fatal Chair nor served time. He chose the other route. He had elected to live in rebellion against man’s orderly institutions, and in this same unreasoning revolt he resolved to die. Like most of his ilk, the Terrorist in physical combat was a hard man, and he really fought a great fight, but he fought it with a master craftsman in the conquering of such as he, and inevitably he lost, with many of Larry Brandon’s bullets in his great body and only life enough left in him to greet--and almost at once to take final leave of--his favorite sister, Olga, who had arrived in Europe a little late as it transpired, to join her brother in his sinister calling.

Olga Slavsky, years younger than her lamented brother, was as pretty a little specimen of dark-eyed femininity as ever enchanted fastidious masculine eye. Yet so is the tigress beautiful.

Still, that is not quite the idea I wish to convey. If you can think of a woman in repose being as beautiful as a tigress and, in smoldering hate and loathing as repulsive, as hideous as a preying vampire, then you will get nearer my meaning. Olga, like her brother, was a staunch exponent of the Terrorist doctrine.

What Brandon expected soon came to pass. The strange girl, whom men called beautiful and women envied, was promptly elected to her brother’s place in what was known in the underworld of unlawful secret orders as the “League.” In this way she immediately crossed swords with the man who had ended the career of her brother Paul, and ere long she became aware, through members of the League detailed as spies, that still another noted criminologist, Joe Seagraves, was unpleasantly hot on her trail.

But Olga was undaunted. For daring and ingenuity, she by far eclipsed her cunning and resourceful brother, who had blazed the path of her iconoclastic pilgrimage.

Since little could thus far be proved against Olga, Seagraves believed that it might be better to declare a sort of armistice and, if possible, gradually win her over to the side of law and order. To this end, he openly called and laid his ideas before her. She frankly flouted his implied interest in her well-being, but showed a spirit of compromise by offering the crime specialist a cigarette.

In such a mood Olga became a docile and purring tiger kitten, only one never quite forgot her claws. She was highly superstitious, Seagraves discovered; but then her whole character was so anomalous and so replete with unexpectedly outcropping traits and wildly illogical beliefs that it was almost to be expected she would believe in ghosts.

She clung tenaciously to the belief, so Brandon told Seagraves, that some day Paul would _return_ and end the life of the man who--the Terrorist had told his sister shortly before his death--had done him to death.

“Do you still believe, Olga, that Paul is going to come back one day and carry Brandon away with him into the Unknown?” asked Seagraves.

Olga’s dark eyes grew suddenly darker as she slowly removed a cigarette from between her too red lips.

“Not only is he coming,” she answered, “but he is coming _soon_. Only night before last I talk with him. I tell him hurry. You see his spirit cannot rest until his murder is--ah, my very bad English!--avenge’.”

“You’re a very foolish woman, Olga,” admonished Seagraves. “If you refuse to listen to my warning you’re going to find yourself in lots of trouble. I want you to understand that.”

Then the drowsing tigress put out her claws.

“You threaten me!” she fairly hissed, tossing away her cigarette and rising. “I am a free woman. You are, after all, like my own people. You would make slaves of all who cannot buy their freedom of--of thought and action.”

She glanced about queerly before she concluded:

“Don’t interest yourself too far. You may be great, but remember--I am no longer to be despised. You have waited too long. Should I choose, for example, I could have shot you where you sit.”

Joe Seagraves leaped out of his chair, an automatic in his experienced hand and menacing the mysterious woman steadily.

But already the allegorical vampire, which the detective had seen reflected in Olga’s piercing eyes and heard in her studied but crisp and stinging words, had spread its skinny wings and flown. Olga was laughing in such sincere, or well-feigned, mockery at his alarm that the dignified detective momentarily felt abashed.

He put his weapon away, nevertheless, only after a searching glance about the very ordinary little room in which the extraordinary woman had received him. He recalled that the last victim of Olga’s brother, mutilated, headless and repellent, had been found in this same neighborhood, if not in this same house.

“Please--_please_ forgive me,” the strange girl was pleading. “You see, I forgot that you are not like--like Brandon. For him there is no forgiveness. He must perish. But we--you and I--why must we be enemies?”

“There’s but one reason, Olga,” replied Seagraves seriously, “and that is a strong one. It is simply the nature of our respective callings.”

“Then I can only be sorry,” she said in a low voice. “Still, my principles are more--what word?--more sacred than your friendship.”

As the woman paused, Seagraves could have taken an oath that he caught the sound of whispering voices through a door standing slightly ajar not three paces from his elbow. Of a sudden, he stepped forward and flung the door wide with a resounding _bang_.

A gray-walled room, quite empty, was all that rewarded his examination. He turned and found Olga smiling again.

“Did you surprise them?” she inquired sweetly.

“Surprise whom?” demanded the detective.

“The rats,” she said ingenuously, still smiling.

“I’ve seen but one rat here,” murmured Seagraves in an impersonal tone: “I see it now. It has wings that fold up like an umbrella. It is called a vampire.”

Olga smiled on placidly, even after Joe Seagraves had closed the door on her and was gone.

* * * * *

In the language of the man who knotted the noose, Olga, as her kind are certain to do, came at last to the end of her rope.

Conspiracy, blackmail and extortion were at last brought home to her; and it chanced that the same eminent crime expert who had hurried the career of her brother to an inglorious finish was likewise destined to be the instrument of fate in the undoing of Olga.

In time the pursuit narrowed down to the end of a most imperfect day for both quarry and hunters. Then all night, as Brandon and Seagraves gradually drew their web closer and ever closer about the elusive Terrorist, she tricked them at every angle and turn with the cunning of a fox, and it was not until three sleepless days and nights that the two renowned sleuths effected her capture more than five hundred miles distant from the field of her long-continued operations.

“She’ll be as slippery as an eel,” Brandon warned Seagraves, when they were ready to start back with their prisoner. “I’ll never consent to any Pullman for _her_, even though we ignore the law and handcuff her to the seat. One of us is going to have to keep his eyes on her constantly.”

“Only one of us could sleep at a time, anyhow,” said Seagraves; “and surely we can stand it one more night, don’t you think? Suppose we both sit it out with her.”

They at length did decide to “sit it out” with their prisoner, and with that understanding they took her aboard the train.