Chapter V: Part 5

“The police are on the lookout for a mysterious woman who has been seen often where strange crimes have been committed. Can it be that they—Lessman and Meta—are using Avis as they are using me? They both deny it. And Avis tells me that she has no recollection of such things.... I wonder....”

_CHAPTER XII._

MORE REMARKABLE THINGS FROM THE DIARY.

“They hanged John Duncan today for the murder of the unknown young man. And I, the man who swore to save him from the gallows, could do nothing.

“I am an accomplice—an accessory after the fact. Lessman is a fiend, and if Meta is any better it is only because she lacks his scientific ability. I am beginning to hate them both.

“I have been tricked. I am but a dupe. My brain is steadily growing weaker. When they have sucked me dry they will cast me aside, as they have Collins and the others. I realize this when I am alone, but when I am with Lessman I do his bidding gladly, happily.

“The papers are often filled with accounts of his work among the poorer classes. They say that he gives thousands of dollars away yearly. Little do they suspect that it is money that he has secured through crime—that he interests himself among the poor only because he occasionally is able to secure some new type of human brain upon whom he can work his nefarious experiments.”

ANOTHER EXTRACT.

“Damn the Bodymaster! I hate him! His hold over me is absolute—supreme.

“Vile as I have become, degraded as he has made me, my very being revolts at the thought of what he has forced me to do. It were better that I were dead—a thousand times better. But I can not even die. For he, curse him, will not let me. He owns my body and my soul.

“Yesterday I am certain that I killed another man. It was Johnston, the broker—a man I knew well in my other days—as kind-hearted an old fellow as ever lived. Many is the favor that he has done for me. Yet, at the dictation of Lessman, I took the poor old fellow’s life.

“God in Heaven! What a mixup it was! Lessman planned it all. He might have made it different—easier for those left behind to bear. But no—that is not his way. He loves the dramatic, the theatrical. But let me tell it just as it happened:

“Together, we went to Johnston’s house—Lessman and I. The poor old fellow has been under the weather for several days, but he has not allowed his illness to interfere with his philanthropic work. Lessman, in his guise of a worker among the poor and afflicted, had no trouble in gaining entrance. He introduced me as another laborer in the vineyard. I have changed so much as a result of what I have been through that Johnston failed to recognize me.

“Alone in the room with the old man, Lessman commanded me to do his bidding. I swear that I tried to withhold my hand, but I was powerless. It was not I, but another, who seized the scrawny neck in my muscular fingers and pressed—pressed—pressed against the windpipe until the haggard white face turned black and the gray eyes bulged forth under their shaggy white brows like glass beads.

“He tried to fight back—to defend himself—but what was his puny strength compared to mine? His efforts only incensed me the more. I shook him as a terrier roughs a rat. And the agonized expression on his face! It was awful. He tried to shriek for help, but so firm was my hold upon him that he could only splutter and gurgle.

“Lessman watched it all. He chuckled with glee at the feeble old man’s weak gasps and urged me to further efforts. Then, when I had laid the old fellow down upon his couch, it was The Bodymaster who, with a tremendous show of hypocrisy, shouted for help and jerked frantically at the bell which summoned family and servants.

“Never shall I forget the look of pathetic grief upon the face of the dead man’s aged helpmate. Liar that he is, Lessman told her a story of the old fellow’s sudden choking and of his death before we could summon help. The servants carried her swooning from the room.”

A FURTHER ENTRY.

“Mrs. Johnston is dying, they say, from grief. Lessman chuckles over it, thinking it a huge joke. When I am with him, I laugh, too. Away from him, I can see the horror—the devilish horror of it all.

“Lessman is richer by thousands of dollars. Mrs. Johnston, if she lives, will be almost a pauper. The sum of which she was filched represented practically their all—the savings of a lifetime. For Lessman presented a forged will in which almost everything, except a small amount for the widow, was left to charity _with Lessman as the administrator_.”

_CHAPTER XIII._

_Following the above, my diary is filled for several pages with meaningless, childlike scrawls. I seem to have tried to write, but evidently my brain and hand failed to co-ordinate. Here and there I can make out a curse against The Bodymaster, but nothing else can be read. From this I take it that several weeks passed between the time the last entry was written and that which now follows. During that time I was probably in one of my trancelike states, so deeply under Lessman’s influence that I had no control over my actions. At the same time the fact that I even attempted to write shows that, deep within my subconscious brain, there was ever that desire to give the horrible truth to the world._

FROM THE DIARY.

“I have denied the truth. I have betrayed those in whose pay I am, and now I know the remorse of Judas.

“Can it be that The Bodymaster seeks my Avis? Are those glances which he darts at her from beneath his half-closed lids intended to be messages of love?

“Of late she has appeared distracted and filled with a vague melancholy when I am around. Does she wish to tell me something, yet fears to open her lips?

“She knows my cataclysmic temper. She has seen me throw off the baleful influence of The Bodymaster when a wild fit of passion seized me. She probably fears that I will again rise against him and that he will blast me where I stand.

“My hands are tied. In turning myself over to The Bodymaster I have betrayed the woman I love. May Heaven have mercy on my soul!”

ANOTHER ENTRY.

“In prowling about the ruins of the old building today I found the remains of an ancient chapel. In one end was an altar, tumbling to ruin. In a little niche, dust covered, was a bottle of Holy Water. I have seized upon it and have hidden it in my room. Perhaps it will save us both.

“I wonder if The Bodymaster has sold himself to the devil? I have heard of such things. No one would believe that such a thing is possible. Yet who would believe that the happenings which I have recorded in my diary could have taken place? They sound like witchcraft, so strange, so diabolical are they. I never believed in such things, but now I am ready to believe anything.”

A SUBSEQUENT EXTRACT.

“My mind is made up. I talked with Avis again today. She practically admitted that Lessman has been annoying her with his attentions. Who knows to what steps he will go while she is under his devilish influence?

“Meta, too, is showing her teeth at poor Avis. Heretofore she has shielded the innocent girl to a certain extent. Of that I am certain, and Avis also believes it. But of late she has acted strangely, even showing her temper on several occasions. Lessman treats her at such times with amused contempt. He knows the absolute hold that he has over her.

“But she may injure my loved one. How, I do not know. She is a woman capable of anything. And the ‘green-eyed monster’ has neither brains nor conscience.

“I am going to be a man at last. I am summoning all of my will power for the battle which is sure to come within a few days. I must—I will—break the bonds which he has placed about me. Just as I arose in rebellion against him on those other occasions, so will I rise against him again for the sake of the woman I love. But this time there will be no surrender. I will conquer him and save her, or die in the attempt.

“To die for Avis may mitigate my sin in the eyes of God.

“I feel The Bodymaster summoning me.... My every nerve tingles.... These may be the last lines I will ever write.... I wonder if these pages will ever be read by other eyes than mine?... I go now to answer to his call.... _God help me...._”

_CHAPTER XIV._

_The remainder of my tale is from memory, for the preceding lines are the final entry in my diary. As I have stated elsewhere, I can recall certain things which occasionally happened during my trance-like periods. Remember your dreams—vague, indistinct, hazy—leaping here and there? So are my recollections of that last hour with The Bodymaster. Probably many things happened of which I have no memory. In my desire to stick to facts, I give only that which I remember, leaving the blank places to the reader’s imagination._

It must have been immediately after making the final entry in my diary that Lessman summoned me, for the book was in my pocket when I eventually found myself.

Of this, however, I have no memory. My first recollection is of floating through space on one of those strange exploring expeditions in the Great Beyond on which The Bodymaster so often sent me, several of which are described in my diary. Whether I was just returning, or was on my way, I do not know. I only recall that something seemed to be dragging me back—that my whole thought—if thought I could be said to have had—was to get back to my own body as soon as possible.

My next recollection is of being in the room with Lessman. My body lay back in an easy chair, cold, stark and deathlike. I attempted to enter it. But the will of Lessman held me back.

I could see, I could hear, yet I had no visibility. I was but a wraith—an ego as it were—a thought—a spirit—a vapor!

And I was controlled wholly by the brain of Lessman. Just as the invisible current sent out by a central station causes the tiny submarine miles away to hurl itself here and there, so was his magnetic brain master of my actions.

I knew then—or _felt_ rather than knew, for I do not believe that a wraith is able to think—I felt that it was Lessman’s will that I should never return to my body shell. Something—it was his thought—seemed to hurl me back into space. And at the same time another—an even stronger thought—seemed to hold me transfixed.

It was the will power that I had concentrated for weeks past, aided by the desire for help from Avis. Her whole being was calling out for me.

She was in the beast’s arms. For once in his career his terrible will had no effect upon his victim. Her golden hair was torn from its coils and lay in a shimmering cloud about her shoulders. Her tiny fists beat a tattoo upon his face; his black, lustful eyes gazed, snakelike, into hers, seeking to charm her with their power.

It was awful! I knew that she was calling me—calling me with every bit of her being. And I was helpless, chained to the floor, unable to regain the cold form which was myself.

Suddenly, she tore herself from his grasp. Her clothing was hanging in shreds; across her cheek was an ugly scratch; upon one white, rounded arm stood a livid red welt where his cruel fingers had seized her. She was screaming madly. The furniture was overturned.

Now he had her cornered. But she fought herself away from him, striking him across the head with the leg of a chair that had been broken in the fray.

He pursued her across the room.... Once more she was in his grasp. I could hear her breath come gaspingly as she put every ounce of her strength into a final effort to free herself....

The door opened. Meta entered. Her black eyes were blazing. Her mouth worked convulsively. She was a raging demon—a woman scorned—cast aside for another. Like a devil from hell, she threw herself into the fray. Lessman swept her aside with a single motion of his muscular arm.

For an instant she lay there stunned.... She dragged herself to her knees, her lips mouthing curses.... She half rose to her feet and staggered toward them as Lessman dragged his shrieking victim toward the door which led to the other room. He turned toward her, his fiery eyes snapping with uncontrolled anger.

For the moment I was forgotten.... Something snapped. I found myself again within my own body, the lust for battle raging within me.... Lessman, surrounded by his enemies, turned like a stag at bay.... I felt the currents of his powerful mind surge around me again like great waves beating against a rock-bound coast.

Every bit of energy I possessed was necessary to hold myself together. He caught me within the power of his will! I felt myself slipping—slipping—_slipping_! Everything grew black before me. I could see nothing save his eyes—burning—_burning_ into my very soul.

Like a man who is fighting an overdose of chloral, I strove to free myself from the web which his mind was weaving about me. It was of no avail. Again I felt a wave of fire shoot through my veins.

I lurched against the table. Seizing the lamp, with a final effort, I hurled it straight at the face of the mocking demon before me.

* * * * *

I knew no more until I awoke in the hospital.

They say that the place Lessman called his sanitarium was burned to the ground the night before they found me wandering, almost a maniac, several miles away.

As I stated in the beginning, I am unable to distinguish between the truth and the wanderings of my diseased brain. The reader must draw his own conclusions.

What happened? Did I kill Lessman? Did he and Meta and Avis perish in the fire with the other poor unfortunates? Nobody knows.

* * * * *

I have just learned that a woman—a golden-haired woman—was found a week ago in a demented condition in a far distant town. The reports say that she mumbles something about “The Bodymaster!” Can it be Avis? I leave tonight for the hospital where she is confined. If it be she, perhaps my presence will recall her to herself.

THE END.

_Crocodiles and Voodooism Play Important Parts in_

Jungle Death

_By_ Artemus Calloway

The very atmosphere seemed surcharged with mystery—danger—death.

Even the clear blue sky above seemed to shrink away from The Tropical Gem Plantation as from a thing accursed. Out in the muddy waters of the Ulua, apparently as lifeless as a water-soaked log, a sleepy-eyed crocodile waited—waited as if he, too, sensed impending calamity for the creatures on shore and intended being at hand to assert his rights should the threatened catastrophe bring food for his kind.

All this impressed Bart Condon, standing in the protecting shade of the softly rustling banana jungle, eyes focused on the busy scene across the river, brain busy with the disquieting events of the past few weeks.

Bart Condon was troubled. Here was something he knew not how to fight, because it was something he could not see. Until recently, he had thought himself fairly familiar with Honduras and the trials of a plantation manager there, but this was something new—something which hid in the shadows and struck when one was not looking.

First there had been the matter of the cistern water in the laborers’ quarters. Some one had poisoned it—not in a manner to cause death, but illness. Condon had been mystified by the epidemic which descended upon the place until the plantation physician made an examination of the water. Then he was the more at sea. Who could have done this—and why?

Close upon this trouble came whispers—rumors that the place was bewitched. More than a dozen of the more superstitious blacks and half blacks slipped away. And their places had been hard to fill.

Then had come the fires, starting no one knew when or how. Once a manacca shack, in which a sick man lived, burned; and he was brought out half-stifled, scorched and raving about the devils that infested the place.

Other things occurred. And there was more whispering, more dissatisfaction.

And then had come death. A partly devoured body had been found lodged against a mud bar in the river. The work of crocodiles, Condon had thought, until examination disclosed the fact that there was a bullet in the man’s brain. And then he knew that the crocodiles had profited from the work of a murderer.

And now all the plantation laborers threatened to leave. Somehow Condon felt that he could not blame them, though he knew that their desertion meant his ruin.

The activity along the river bank increased. The crocodile moved slowly downstream. Simultaneously with the arrival of a noisy fruit train on Condon’s side of the river, another chugged into view on the opposite shore.

As soon as the trains came to a stop natives commenced transferring bananas from the cars to the fruit racks at the water’s edge; here they would later be picked up by the river boat of the big fruit company which purchased the output of many Ulua River plantations, afterward shipping the bananas to the States on its own steamers.

Condon saw George Armstrong standing to the right of the train across the river, and, for some unknown reason he disliked the man more than ever. There was no real reason why he should dislike and distrust Armstrong. Yet he did dislike him, and never, from the first moment his eyes rested upon the man, had he trusted him. For two years now Condon had known the manager of the Royal Palm Plantation Company, and for that length of time some instinct had whispered that the other would be a dangerous foe.

True, Armstrong had always evinced the greatest friendliness, frequently coming across the river, which separated the plantations, to visit Condon. And occasionally—when common courtesy demanded—Condon had returned the visits.

Bart Condon had been in Honduras one year longer than Armstrong, and this year’s experience as manager of the plantation of which he was majority stockholder had taught him many things of value, which he had passed on to the newcomer. But Armstrong’s company was stronger financially than Condon’s, and was desirous of expanding. So, for three months now, Armstrong had been trying to buy the Tropical Gem. And for nearly that length of time the Tropical Gem had been having trouble.

* * * * *

But it was only this morning that Condon had first commenced wondering what connection, if any, there might be between Armstrong’s desire for the Tropical Gem and the trouble which had come to that plantation. Of course such thoughts were silly. Unworthy. He should be ashamed of himself.... And yet....

Standing where he was, in the shelter of the tall banana plants which at a distance resembled a forest of green trees, Condon knew Armstrong had not seen him. And for some reason, which he himself did not understand, he did not want the other man to see him this morning.

Bart Condon turned and slowly made his way from the river to a trail about two hundred yards away. There he paused to watch some men cutting fruit which would be carried by mule cart to the river, the railroad being employed only for the longer hauls.

Finally he turned to his pony, fastened to a young avacado tree, mounted and rode away. Twenty minutes later he was at plantation headquarters.

An hour after reaching headquarters Condon was sitting at his office desk, a slender young native opposite him. This man—Juan Hernandez—one of Condon’s foremen, possessed intelligence above the average. He was one of the very few natives of that section of Honduras who boasted pure Spanish blood, but at the same time he understood thoroughly the mixed breeds in whose veins there flowed the blood of African, Indian, Chinese and others, to say nothing of the full-blood negroes from Jamaica, Barbadoes, and elsewhere.

Once facing Hernandez, Condon lost no time in getting to the subject:

“The men—they are very much upset?”

Hernandez nodded.

“They are, Mr. Condon,” he replied in perfect English, thanks to a States education. “They are whispering that there is a curse upon the plantation; that you are the cause of it; that the spirits are displeased with you, and I don’t know what else. They——”

Hernandez hesitated. Then:

“Why, they are even beginning to blame you for the death of that man found in the river, although they don’t know, as we do, that someone shot him.”

Condon frowned. “Somehow I suspect as much. But you are sure your information—what you tell me is correct?”

Hernandez nodded. “I am positive of it. Further than that I feel that I have discovered what is behind it all. You know you told me a week ago to look into it——”

“Yes?”

“It is voodooism. A witch doctor who lives in the jungle is behind the trouble here. And a white man is behind the witch doctor!”

Condon started. “You mean—?”

For a moment Hernandez said nothing, staring at the desk before him. Then:

“Armstrong!”

Condon’s hands twitched nervously. “How do you know—or suspect—this, Hernandez?”

“I am positive, Mr. Condon. I have a man working under me whom I trust implicitly. He is an Indian—one of those commonly known as a Mosquito Indian—they live down on the Mosquito Coast, you know——”

“Yes. Go on. What about him?”

“Well, he is a very intelligent fellow. Not a drop of black blood in his veins. Of course, many of the Indians in this country have their own superstitious beliefs, but not so this man. For years he has worked around foreigners—those ideas, if he ever had them, have been supplanted by those of civilization.

“This man told me that the witch doctor—an old dried-up black fellow, no telling how old he is—has been coming to the plantation. He was here the night before the water was poisoned. He has been here since. And lately the laborers have been going to see him—holding ceremonies and that sort of thing.

“And tonight——” Hernandez lowered his voice—“they go again! They are to be there at ten o’clock. The witch doctor is going to tell them that their lives are not safe on this plantation as long as you have anything to do with it. Tomorrow they will leave. And no other laborers will come here. Then—Armstrong thinks he can buy you out. You see, with Armstrong in charge, the curse will be removed.”

Condon secured a box of cigars from his desk, handed it to Hernandez, found a box of matches, lighted a cigar himself.

“_Hmm!_ Pretty clever scheme. But—Oh! hang it, Hernandez, do you suppose this _can_ be correct?”

Hernandez regarded his cigar thoughtfully. “I _know_ it is!”

“Well——”

“Just a moment, please, Mr. Condon. There is one chance for us—only one. That is to discredit the witch doctor. Once the superstitious mixed breeds and blacks find that he is not infallible, that there is something more powerful than he, they will lose confidence in him. They will believe nothing he has told them. But until that is done the case is hopeless. You see, many of the men working here were raised on superstition—on voodooism. The blacks brought it from Africa, and their descendants in this and the other nearby countries cling to it. And, as I have said, we have them here from many places.”

“How are we to discredit the witch doctor?”

Hernandez smiled. “Armstrong visits him at eight o’clock this evening, to pay half the price for running the laborers away from here. He is to pay the other half when they are gone. Of course, he has paid something all along for the various little jobs, but this is the big one—the big money job.”

“What on earth would that old fellow want with money?”

Hernandez laughed. “Square-faced gin. He stays soaked all the time. But I have a plan——”

“But how,” interrupted Condon, “did your man learn all this?”

“By pretending to believe in voodooism—and by watching. He has attended the ceremonies with the others. And he has followed Armstrong there when the witch doctor was alone. That is how he learned of the poisoned water. He has heard nothing there about the murder of the native, but I am sure there is a connection there somewhere if we can find it.”

Hernandez made a significant gesture.

“You don’t know the confidence those people have in that old fellow. He has a pond there in front of his cave. A natural sort of pond. Been there for centuries, I suppose, and it is full of crocodiles. Sacrifices to these crocodiles have been hinted at—but of course I couldn’t swear to that. I do know, however, that the laborers here are blind enough in their belief of him to do anything he might tell them.”

Condon’s face was wrinkled in thought. “But your plan?” Hernandez leaned nearer. “Listen....”

* * * * *

Seven-thirty o’clock that evening found Bart Condon, Juan Hernandez and the Indian of whom Condon had been told concealed on the side of the little jungle hill above the witch doctor’s cave. Almost at his doorway was the pond of which Hernandez had spoken. An occasional _swish_ of the water told of life in it. Just in front of the cave, squatted on the ground beside a faint brush fire, was the witch doctor, an old, shriveled, dried-up, gray-headed black.

“We can hear from this place?” Condon whispered.

“Yes,” replied Hernandez, “but be quiet. He might hear you.”

Back in the jungle, monkeys chattered. Baboons howled nearby. A macaw set up a shrill shrieking. Once Condon heard the helpless, hopeless cry of some small animal as it met the death of the jungle. Some beast of the tropics slipped past them. Bart Condon gripped his revolver.

And then they heard somebody approaching. Down a little trail—the same trail which Condon had traveled part of the way—a man was coming. A few moments later Armstrong was standing before the witch doctor’s fire.

With every nerve on edge, Condon watched. Armstrong and the witch doctor, both now seated before the blaze, wasted no time on inconsequential talk.

Armstrong was speaking in Spanish: “You understand exactly what you are to tell those people when they come here tonight.”

“I do.”

“Very well. Here is half the money. You will receive as much more—provided you get Condon’s laborers away tomorrow—and keep them and all others away.”

The witch doctor nodded. “They will be away before tomorrow. When they leave here they will be afraid to return to the man Condon’s plantation.”

“They won’t even return for their things?”

The old man laughed shrilly. “They will believe everything on that plantation accursed when I have finished with them and will never desire to see their things again. I intended telling them that they must leave tomorrow. Now I have decided to have them leave tonight. It is better so.”

Again the witch doctor laughed.

“But——” and now there was something in his voice Condon had not detected there before—“there is more money to come to me, Senor.”

Armstrong’s tone was impatient. “You get that when the laborers have quit the plantation.”

The old man chuckled. “But I mean other money.”

“What other money?”

“The money for keeping your secret about the man you shot!”

George Armstrong jumped to his feet. “You’re crazy! I shot no man.”

The witch doctor also was on his feet. “But you did, Senor, I saw you! I don’t blame you for what you did. The fellow saw you coming from here and he might have been suspicious. I, also, would have killed him, but you did the job for me. And now you will pay me for keeping the secret.”

The witch doctor’s words seemed to madden the manager of the Royal Palm Plantation. Straight at the old man’s throat he sprang. They fought like wild animals. The witch doctor, for all his frailness, possessed enormous strength.

Suddenly Hernandez caught Condon’s arm: “Look! Down the trail!” he whispered.

Condon looked. Then he gasped in amazement. The trail was filled, as far as he could see, with men.

* * * * *

Suddenly Condon’s attention was brought back to the struggle by a scream of terror, which burst from Armstrong’s lips. And then, locked in embrace, the plantation manager and the witch doctor disappeared in the crocodile pool.

There was a sudden rush—horrid grunts—the crushing of bones—and Condon imagined he could see the water redden. Armstrong and the witch doctor were no more.

Then, from Condon’s laborers in the trail, came cries of denunciation. “He is no witch doctor! He fought with the white man and was eaten by crocodiles—he who told us that he could destroy white men by pointing his finger at them. He told us that the crocodiles could not harm him.”

Unafraid of that which was now no mystery, some of the bolder ones advanced to the fire. One picked up some gold pieces, which the witch doctor had dropped. Another found Armstrong’s purse.

They turned and rejoined their companions. Five minutes later the entire party had passed out of hearing.

Hernandez touched Condon on the shoulder. “We can go now. And our troubles are over. The men will remain on the plantation perfectly satisfied.”

“But I don’t understand,” said Condon slowly, rising to his feet and rubbing his cramped legs, “why they came so early. I thought they were to get here at ten o’clock.”

“So Armstrong and the witch doctor thought,” laughed Hernandez. “But the message was carried by our friend here—and he asked my advice before delivering it. And he made the hour earlier so they would find Armstrong here. That alone would have destroyed their confidence in the witch doctor, for he is supposed to have nothing to do with white men.”

Hernandez smiled.

“They were told, although this man professed not to believe it, that there was a report to the effect that Armstrong had bought the witch doctor—had paid him to betray them. That is why they understood everything so readily when they saw the end of the fight.”

“Voodooism,” said Condon thoughtfully, “loses its strength when it mixes up with white men.”

_Farnsworth Wright Offers Another Tale of Diabolic Terror_

_The SNAKE FIEND_

Even as a child, Jack Crimi delighted in collecting reptiles, and he seemed to absorb much of their venomous nature.

His best-loved pet was a large blacksnake; but when it caused him a whipping by crawling into his father’s bedroom, he roasted it over a slow fire in a large pot, listening with glee to its agonized hissing and pushing it back with a stick when it strove to crawl out of the searing container. It is no cause for wonder, then, that his burning love for the girl of his dreams turned to fierce hate when she became the bride of another.

Crimi’s sentiment for Marjorie Bressi was aroused by her fine Italian beauty, which reminded him of his mother. He could have fallen in love with any other girl as easily, if he had set his mind to it in the same way. By dint of comparing her with his mother’s picture, he conceived a great admiration for her: then he wished to possess her, to be her lord and master, to marry her. Gazing on her every day with this thought in his mind, his admiration grew to a burning passion. Of all this he said nothing to Marjorie, and then it was too late.

Marjorie loved, and was loved by, Allen Jimerson, a young civil engineer. Crimi neither threatened nor cajoled. He simply accepted the fact, and meditated revenge. He was all smiles at their wedding, and he gave them a wedding present beyond what he could reasonably afford, while he planned to tumble their happiness in ruins about their ears.

After a short honeymoon, Jimerson departed with his wife to take up his duties as resident engineer of some construction work on a western railroad. Crimi, his face glowing with friendship and good will, was the last to clasp Marjorie’s hand in farewell, as the train pulled out of the station.

“Write to me often, Marjorie,” was his parting injunction. “Send me a letter as soon as you get settled, and let me know how you are getting along. I don’t want to lose touch with either of you.”

And he meant it.

* * * * *

Marjorie was fond of the handsome, manly-looking Italian youth, and liked him immensely as a friend, although she had never been in love with him. No sooner was she settled in her new home than she wrote him a long letter, telling of her husband’s work, the bleakness of the desert country, and the strange newness of her life. She and her husband occupied a cabin together, apart from the bunk-houses of the construction camp, in the sagebrush region of northern California, not far from the Nevada border.

A fierce joy and exultation leapt in Crimi’s heart as he read Marjorie’s letter.

_“You would like the country better than I do.” she wrote.
“for it is infested with rattlesnakes. The bare desert rocks
on the ridge four miles from our cabin are swarming with them.
Ugh! They sun themselves in tangled masses, Allen says, but
truly I can’t bring myself to go near the place. I get quite
too much of snakes without that, for we are constantly killing
them in the sagebrush. This country has never been settled, and
except for an occasional prospector, there was nobody to kill
them before the surveyors came. The Indians never bother the
snakes, but pass by on the other side of a sagebrush and leave
them in peace.”_

Crimi scored these lines in red ink, word by word, as if to blazon them on his memory, and he drew little pictures of snakes on the margin. He burned out Marjorie’s signature with acid, spitefully watching with minute care as the letters faded, and gleaning a savage satisfaction from seeing the paper rot away under the venomous bite of the poison. Then he fed the letter to the flames, as he had roasted his blacksnake, years before, and watched the missive burn into black ashes and crumble slowly away, page by page, into gray dust.

Followed Crimi’s pursuit of the pair. His arrival was not expected by either Jimerson or Marjorie, but it was none the less welcome, for both of them liked the genial, companionable Italian. Life on the edge of the desert had few distractions at best. Crimi’s eyes lit with genuine pleasure at sight of his prospective victims. The joy on both sides was sincere.

“No, this isn’t a pleasure trip,” he explained to them, “although I expect to have pleasure enough out of it before I get through. I have turned from collecting reptiles to studying their lives and habits. I intend to write a monograph on rattlesnakes. When I got your letter, Marjorie, I knew that I could do no better than to come here. I expect to become very well acquainted with that ridge you wrote about, where the snakes sun themselves in tangled masses.”

Marjorie shuddered, and Crimi laughed.

“Well, don’t bring any of your snakes around here,” she said. “I turn cold and something grips at my insides every time I hear one rattle.”

Crimi built himself a small cabin about a mile from the Jimersons, in the direction of the rattlesnake ridge. He adorned the shack tastefully, and Marjorie’s deft hand gave a distinctly feminine neatness and charm to its appearance.

He became a frequent visitor at the Jimerson cabin, and evening after evening he read to them in his melodious, well modulated voice. Sometimes the draughtsman or transitman would come in, and Crimi would join in playing cards until late at night.

He seemed to take keen pleasure in the company of Marjorie and her husband, and his face always lit up at sight of them, especially when they were together. But it was the joy of a boy who sees the apples ripening for him on his neighbor’s tree, and knows that they will soon be ready for him to pluck. He was most happy when he was meditating his frightful revenge. As his preparations drew near their end, he often spent whole hours gloating over the fate in store for the couple. For Marjorie, in loving Jimerson, had aroused him to insane jealousy, and Jimerson, having robbed him of his heart’s desire, was included in Crimi’s fierce hate for the girl who had crossed him.

When, one evening, Marjorie and her husband happened in at Crimi’s cabin, Marjorie expressed her horror at the thought of Crimi wandering among the snake-infested rocks of the rattlesnake ridge. The snake-hunter seated her on a box that contained a twisting knot of the venomous reptiles.

Marjorie, serenely unaware, talked on blithely, and Crimi’s merry laugh pealed out at regular intervals. He was in right jovial mood that evening, for he was ready to spring the death-trap prepared for his two friends. He only awaited a favorable opportunity to strike.

* * * * *

The opportunity came when the surveyors’ cook, crazed by bad whisky, smashed up the kitchen. Jimerson discharged him, and the cook muttered threats of a horrible vengeance.

“Shut up,” Jimerson ordered. “This is the third time you’ve been seeing snakes, and now you’ve wrecked the cook shack. You ought to be sent to jail—or a lunatic asylum.”

“It’s _you_ that will be seeing snakes,” the cook spluttered. “You an’ that Italian wife of yours’ll see plenty of ’em—red, an’ green, an’——”

Jimerson struck him across the mouth and sent him on his way. This was in the evening. The draughtsman and rodman went to town the next day to hire a new cook, while Jimerson and Marjorie went on an outing up the headwaters of Feather Creek. It was Sunday, and they intended to spend the day there.

Crimi declined their invitation to accompany them. It was the moulting season, he explained, when the snakes were casting their skins. He could ill afford to lose a day of observation at this time, for he had several perplexing points to clear up before writing his monograph.

Crimi walked fearlessly from rock to rock of the rattlesnake ridge, chuckling to himself. The tangled masses of snakes, of which he had been told, existed only in rumor, although there were snakes in plenty if one but looked for them. Tangled masses would serve his purpose later, but he had gathered them here and there, one or two at a time.

By noon the little cluster of cabins occupied by the engineers was deserted. Marjorie and her husband had been gone since sun-up, and the surveyors were all in town. Not a soul was stirring in the neighborhood of the shacks, and the men at the construction camp were mostly lying around in their bunks, or playing cards.

Crimi nailed fast the windows of Jimerson’s cabin. Then he entered and secured the bed to the floor so that it could not be moved. He laboriously carried his boxes of snakes a mile or more, from his room to the little gully behind the surveyors’ cabins, and hid them in the sagebrush.

Marjorie and her husband came back from their tramp after dark that evening, dog-tired. Marjorie cooked a little supper, and by 10 o’clock the two were asleep. Crimi entered their cabin about midnight. They were fast in the chains of slumber, and he did not even find it necessary to muffle his tread. He removed the chairs, shoes, clothes, and even the hand mirror and toilet articles. Everything that might serve as a weapon, no matter how slight, he took away.

Then he brought his snakes from the gully, and collected them in front of the cabin. When he had assembled them all, he knocked the top from the largest box, carried it into the room, and, in the audacity of his certain triumph, he dumped the twisting mass of rattlesnakes on the bed where Marjorie and her husband lay asleep.

The other boxes he emptied quickly just inside of the door, and withdrew, for he had no wish to set foot among the venomous serpents. Revenge is never satisfied if retribution overtakes the avenger, and Crimi had no wish to share the fate of his victims. He locked the door from the outside, and battened it. Then he removed the boxes that had contained the snakes, and returned to his cabin and peacefully went to sleep.

* * * * *

Marjorie awoke with the first rays of the sun, and lazily opened her eyes.

Her heart leapt suddenly into her throat, and she was wide awake in an instant. The flat, squat head of a rattlesnake was creeping along her breast. Its beady eyes were fixed on her face, and its red tongue flickered before her like a forked flame. For a moment she thought she was still dreaming, but the familiar outlines of the room limned themselves in her consciousness, and she knew that what she saw was real.

Her shriek rent the air, as she threw back the bed clothes and sprang to the floor. She stepped on a coiled serpent, which sounded an ominous warning as it struck out blindly.

She quickly climbed back on the bed, and stood on the pillow, screaming. Her husband was beside her at once, hazily trying to understand the import of the hysterical torrent of words she was sobbing into his ears. For an instant he thought she must be in the clutch of some horrible nightmare. Then a quick, startled glance around the room turned his blood to ice.

There was now a continuous rattling, as of dry leaves blowing against a stone wall, for Marjorie’s screams had galvanized the snakes into activity. The room was filled with their angry din. It sounded in Jimerson’s ears like the crack of doom. The floor seemed covered with the creeping reptiles. Some were coiled, the whirring tips of their tails making an indistinct blur as they rattled, and their heads swaying slowly back and forth. Others writhed along the floor, their venomous squat heads thrusting forward and withdrawing, and their tongues darting out like red flames.

On the bed itself there was motion underneath the thrown-back coverlet, and the ugly, gray head of a thick, four-foot snake protruded from under it, its evil eyes shining dully, as if through a film of dust. It extricated itself, and coiled as if to strike, while Marjorie shrank fearfully against the wall, wide-eyed with horror.

Jimerson attacked the reptile with a pillow, sweeping it from the bed onto the floor. He quickly looked about him for a weapon, and saw at once that he was trapped. There was not even a shoe or a pincushion with which to fight the crawling, rattling creatures.

He tried to rock the bed toward the window, as boys move saw-horses forward while sitting on them. But the bed was firmly fastened to the floor, and in his efforts to release it he was bitten on the wrist by the strike of a large snake coiled near the foot of the bed.

Jimerson flung the reptile across the room, and sprang to the floor with an oath, crushing a large rattler with his heel as he jumped. He raced to the door, and wrestled with it for a full minute before he discovered that he and Marjorie were locked in that serpent-hole.

He sprang to the window, and felt a sharp stab of pain in the flesh of his calf as the open jaws of another reptile found their mark, and the poison fangs were imbedded deep in the flesh. The window, like the door, was nailed fast, but he broke out the glass with his bare fists.

Unmindful of the blood on his lacerated hands, he was back at the bedside, treading over reptiles with his bare feet. Marjorie lay on the bed, unconscious.

He lifted her in his bleeding arms and hurled her through the window to safety. He struggled out after her, tearing open his bitten leg on the jagged pieces of glass still left in the window frame. The spurting blood drenched him, and he leaned, faint and dizzy, against the cabin as three of his surveyors came running up, having been attracted by Marjorie’s screams.

In almost incoherent words he told them what had happened. He asked them to make immediate search for the discharged cook, for there was no doubt in Jimerson’s mind that it was the cook who had placed the snakes in the room.

Then the sky went suddenly black before his eyes, and he lost consciousness.

* * * * *

At that minute Crimi was waking from peaceful dreams. He recalled what he had done the night before, and blissfully mused on what must be taking place in the Jimerson cabin.

A phantasmagoric succession of pictures weltered in his mind—Marjorie and her husband fighting with bare hands against the serpents—bitten a score of times by the angry fangs of the rattlesnakes—clinging to each other in terror—sinking to the floor in agony as the poison swelled their tortured limbs and overcame them—lying green and blue in death, with rattlesnakes crawling and hissing over their dead bodies.

It is remarkable how few people die from rattlesnake bites even when as badly bitten as Jimerson was. Probably not one adult victim in a hundred succumbs to the venom, although mistaken popular belief considers rattlesnake poison as fatal as the death-potion of the Borgias.

Jimerson had known too many cases of snake bite to believe his case hopeless. He did not give up and die, nor did he try to poison his system with whisky. He knew that his condition was serious but he let rest and permanganate of potash, rubbed into his wounds, effect a cure. The bleeding from the lacerated leg had almost entirely washed out the poison, and there was little swelling. The pain of his swollen wrist, however, distended almost to bursting, kept him from sleeping, and the sickly green hue of the bite distressed him. But it did not kill him.

Crimi, careful observer of reptiles though he was, had never known an actual case of snake bite, and he shared the popular illusion that the bite of the rattlesnake dooms its victim to death. Hence he was certain of the complete success of his revenge, and his gloating glee was unclouded by even the shadow of a doubt that Marjorie and her husband had been killed in his death-trap. He awaited only the supreme joy of drinking in the details of his success, to feel the exultant thrill of complete victory.

As Crimi sat alone, two days after that horrible morning, Jimerson was limping slowly toward his cabin. His swollen hand still pained him badly, and there was a dull ache in his ankle when he put too much weight on it, but he thought the fresh air would benefit him.

Supporting himself with a cane, and leaning heavily on Marjorie at times, he went painfully toward the young Italian’s desert home. Not once had his suspicion pointed toward Crimi as author of the crime, for the guilt of the lunatic cook seemed all too clear. Besides, he liked Crimi for his genial camaraderie, his joviality and good humor, and his frank interest in everything that concerned either him or Marjorie.

So intent was the snake fiend on passing the torments of his victims before his fancy, that he did not hear the knock on his cabin door. His brain was too busy to heed the message sent by his ears, for he was feasting on the mental and physical tortures that Jimerson and Marjorie must have endured before they lay cold in death on the floor of the cabin, hideously discolored by the venom of the rattlesnakes.

By degrees he became conscious that he was not alone. Two persons stood before him, and he raised his eyes in eager anticipation, to feed his revengeful spirit on the story he had waited two days to hear.

Even when he gazed on those whom he had consigned to a horrible death, the thought that they were alive did not penetrate his consciousness. The idea of failure had never entered his mind for even an instant. They were dead, beyond the peradventure of a doubt, and now—_their avenging ghosts stood before him_!

* * * * *

Crimi dropped to his knees in white terror and crawled behind his chair. He clasped and unclasped his hands in agony of fear. Sweat poured from his face and bathed his body. He implored mercy. He screamed for forgiveness. He gibbered like a frightened ape. Half forgotten words of Italian, learned at his mother’s knee, fell from his lips. He pleaded and begged for his life, crawling on his face toward the amazed couple in an endeavor to clasp their knees.

As the meaning of his broken ejaculations was borne in on them, a tremendous loathing and disgust overcame them. Marjorie clung to her husband, unnerved at the repulsive sight of the malicious coward groveling on the floor and trying to kiss their feet.

Crimi shrieked and gnawed his hands as he saw the avenging angels of his victims leave the cabin.

* * * * *

It was impossible for the stern hand of the law to inflict a greater punishment on Jack Crimi than his own malice had wrought for him. Today he occupies a padded cell in a hospital for the incurably insane.

Find Skull of Man Million Years Old

The fossilized skull of a man, who lived more than a million years ago, was recently unearthed in Patagonia, and it antedates by hundreds of thousands of years any human relic previously discovered. Dr. J. G. Wolfe, who brought news of the remarkable discovery to Buenos Aires, says the fossilization was that of Tertiary sandstone, and this means the man lived in the Tertiary Era, which ended before the Glacial Era began, which in turn means the skull is considerably more than a million years old. Except for the lower jaw, which is missing, the skull is almost perfect. The eye sockets and the teeth sockets in the upper jaw are well defined. The cranium is long and oval-shaped, the forehead extremely low and sloping.

Ruins of an ancient fortified town were also discovered by the scientist in the wild region north of Lake Cardiel, in the territory of Santa Cruz. This he regards as the remnants of a civilization that was perhaps even earlier than that of the Peruvian Incas. On one of the walls he found a carving of an animal that resembled the extinct glyptodon.

_Anthony M. Rud’s Remarkable Story of an Insane Artist_

_A_ SQUARE _of_ CANVAS

“No, Madame, I am _not_ insane! I see you hide a smile. Never mind attempting to mask the expression. You are a newcomer here and have learned nothing of my story. I do not blame any visitor—the burden of proof rests upon us, _n’est-ce-pas?_

“In this same ward you have met several peculiar characters, have you not? We have a motley assemblage of conquerors, diplomats, courtesans and divinities—if you’ll take their words for it. There is Alexander the Great, Richelieu, Julius Caesar, Spartacus, Cleopatra—but no matter. _I_ have no delusion. I am Hal Pemberton.

“You start? You believe _this_ my delusion? Look closely at me! I have aged, it is true, yet if you have glimpsed the Metropolitan gallery portrait that Paul Gauguin did of me when I visited Tahiti...?”

I gasped, and fell back a pace. This silver-haired, kindly old soul the mad genius, Pemberton? The temptation was strong to flee when I realized that he told the truth! I knew the portrait, indeed, and for an art student like myself there could be no mistaking the resemblance. I stopped, half-turned. After all, they allowed him freedom of the grounds. He could be no worse surely, than the malignant Cleopatra whom I just had left playing with her “asp”—a five-inch garter snake she had found crossing the gravel path.

“I—I believe you,” came my stammered reply.

What I meant, of course, was that no doubt could exist that he was, certainly, Hal Pemberton. His seamed face lighted up; it was plain _he_ believed that establishment of identity made the matter of his detention absurd.

“They have me registered as Chase—John Chase,” he confided. “Come! Would a true story of an artist’s persecution interest you? It is a recital of misunderstanding, bigotry....”