The Weird Part 14

XIX.

But, a second later, the monkey disappeared. When sparks shot into the night, glittering like a pear peel sprinkled with gold, girl and beast sank under a whirl of black smoke. In the middle of the garden, only the burning carriage was visible as it blazed away with terrifying crackles. 'A pillar of fire' might have been more appropriate than 'burning carriage' to describe the blaze that soared into the starry sky.

Before the pillar of fire, Yoshihide stood still, rooted to the ground. What a strange transformation. The old wrinkled face, which only a minute before had expressed agony at the infernal spectacle, now radiated a blissful ecstasy. Arms tightly crossed on his chest, he seemed to have forgotten he was in the presence of the High Lord. His eyes did not mirror the girl's atrocious agony any longer. Did the form of the thrashing body silhouetted by the wonderful red colour satisfy him?

The strangeness went beyond the sight of this father ecstatically watching his daughter's agony. At that moment, Yoshihide incarnated a solemn exaltation elevated beyond the human condition, some supernatural dignity similar to the King Lion's wrath in his nocturnal appearances. Even the uncountable, soulless night birds scattered by the flames seemed aware of the mysterious virtue that shone like a halo over Yoshihide's worn cap.

If the birds were scared, so much more were we, the humans, down to the menials. We held our breath and, shivering, watched Yoshihide with the same wonderment we would have felt at the unveiling ceremony of a newly made Buddhist image. Those sputtering flames soaring, immense, into the sky, and Yoshihide who stood, petrified and absorbed in the tragic spectacle. Such greatness and joy.

But the Lord, who sat in the veranda, fairly removed from the great fire, was as pale as a spectre. White froth at the corners of his mouth, he gasped like a thirsty animal, grasping tightly his knee draped in the purple hakama with both hands.

XX.

I don't know who spread the story of a carriage burnt with a woman inside, but I know it reached every corner of the country. Many wondered why the Lord had burned Yoshihide's daughter alive. Most people thought it was vengeance for the Lord's thwarted love, although in my opinion the Lord had wanted to chastise the perversity of a painter who had not hesitated in asking that a carriage be burnt before his eyes, even though it involved the sacrifice of a human being, to paint a scene to perfection. This last explanation came from the Lord's very mouth.

Since Yoshihide had such a heart of stone he could witness the death of his own daughter, some accused him of being a devil who had sacrificed his paternal love for the sake of his art. The great priest of Yokawa supported this view: 'Whatever talent they may have in any branch of learning or art, those who did not live according to the five virtues of Confucius, benevolence, justice, courtesy, wisdom and fidelity, are to be condemned to h.e.l.l.'

One month later, when the screen decorated with the scene from h.e.l.l was complete, Yoshihide took it to the palace and presented it to the Lord, with all his respect. The great priest, who happened to be there, as soon as he glanced at the screen, was surely struck by the realism of the infernal horrors, a firestorm raging from the sky to the abyss of h.e.l.l. Although he had glared angrily at Yoshihide at first, he cried, 'Bravo!' tapping his knee in an involuntary gesture. I still remember the Lord drawing a forced smile at the priest's e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n.

From that day on, no one, at least in the palace, spoke ill of the painter. Those who looked at the screen, even though they hated the personage, were impressed with that mysterious solemnity and with the ghastly realism of h.e.l.l's torments, as if they could feel the bite of the infernal fire.

By then, Yoshihide had already departed this life.

The night after he completed his painting, he threw a rope over a beam in his room and hanged himself. Perhaps Yoshihide, who had survived his beloved daughter's untimely death, could not bear the idea of surviving her absence for long. His body is buried under the ruins of his house. After scores of years, wind and rain have worn down the small tombstone, and moss has covered the barrow, erasing all trace of his grave.

Unseen Unfeared.

Francis Stevens.

Francis Stevens (18831948), was the pen name of Gertrude Barrows Bennett, the first major American female writer of fantasy and science fiction. Stevens wrote a number of acclaimed fantasies between 1917 and 1923 and has been called 'the woman who invented dark fantasy'. Among her most famous books are Claimed (1920), which H. P. Lovecraft called, 'One of the strangest and most compelling science fantasy novels you will ever read'. She also wrote the lost world novel The Citadel of Fear (1918) and an early dystopian novel t.i.tled The Heads of Cerberus (1919). Although not all of Stevens' work has dated well, 'Unseen Unfeared' remains a potent example of the cla.s.sic weird tale.

I had been dining with my ever-interesting friend, Mark Jenkins, at a little Italian restaurant near South Street. It was a chance meeting. Jenkins is too busy, usually, to make dinner engagements. Over our highly seasoned food and sour, thin, red wine, he spoke of little odd incidents and adventures of his profession. Nothing very vital or important, of course. Jenkins is not the sort of detective who first detects and then pours the egotistical and revealing details of achievement in the ears of every acquaintance, however appreciative.

But when I spoke of something I had seen in the morning papers, he laughed. 'Poor old "Doc" Holt! Fascinating old codger, to anyone who really knows him. I've had his friendship for years since I was first on the city force and saved a young a.s.sistant of his from jail on a false charge. And they had to drag him into the poisoning of this young sport, Ralph Peeler!'

'Why are you so sure he couldn't have been implicated?' I asked.

But Jenkins only shook his head, with a quiet smile. 'I have reasons for believing otherwise,' was all I could get out of him on that score. 'But,' he added, 'the only reason he was suspected at all is the superst.i.tious dread of these ignorant people around him. Can't see why he lives in such a place. I know for a fact he doesn't have to. Doc's got money of his own. He's an amateur chemist and dabbler in different sorts of research work, and I suspect he's been guilty of "showing off". Result, they all swear he has the evil eye and holds forbidden communion with invisible powers. Smoke?'

Jenkins offered me one of his invariably good cigars, which I accepted, saying thoughtfully: 'A man has no right to trifle with the superst.i.tions of ignorant people. Sooner or later, it spells trouble.'

'Did in his case. They swore up and down that he sold love charms openly and poisons secretly, and that, together with his living so near to somebody else got him temporarily suspected. But my tongue's running away with me, as usual!'

'As usual,' I retorted impatiently, 'you open up with all the frankness of a Chinese diplomat.'

He beamed upon me engagingly and rose from the table, with a glance at his watch. 'Sorry to leave you, Blaisdell, but I have to meet Jimmy Brennan in ten minutes.'

He so clearly did not invite my further company that I remained seated for a little while after his departure; then took my own way homeward. Those streets always held for me a certain fascination, particularly at night. They are so unlike the rest of the city, so foreign in appearance, with their little shabby stores, always open until late evening, their unbelievably cheap goods, displayed as much outside the shops as in them, hung on the fronts and laid out on tables by the curb and in the street itself. Tonight, however, neither people nor stores in any sense appealed to me. The mixture of Italians, Jews and a few Negroes, mostly bareheaded, unkempt and generally unhygienic in appearance, struck me as merely revolting. They were all humans, and I, too, was human. Some way I did not like the idea.

Puzzled a trifle, for I am more inclined to sympathize with poverty than accuse it, I watched the faces that I pa.s.sed. Never before had I observed how b.e.s.t.i.a.l, how brutal were the countenances of the dwellers in this region. I actually shuddered when an old-clothes man, a gray-bearded Hebrew, brushed me as he toiled past with his barrow.

There was a sense of evil in the air, a warning of things which it is wise for a clean man to shun and keep clear of. The impression became so strong that before I had walked two squares I began to feel physically ill. Then it occurred to me that the one gla.s.s of cheap Chianti I had drunk might have something to do with the feeling. Who knew how that stuff had been manufactured, or whether the juice of the grape entered at all into its ill-flavored composition? Yet I doubted if that were the real cause of my discomfort.

By nature I am rather a sensitive, impressionable sort of chap. In some way tonight this neighborhood, with its sordid sights and smells, had struck me wrong.

My sense of impending evil was merging into actual fear. This would never do. There is only one way to deal with an imaginative temperament like mine conquer its vagaries. If I left South Street with this nameless dread upon me, I could never pa.s.s down it again without a recurrence of the feeling. I should simply have to stay here until I got the better of it that was all.

I paused on a corner before a shabby but brightly lighted little drug store. Its gleaming windows and the luminous green of its conventional gla.s.s show jars made the brightest spot on the block. I realized that I was tired, but hardly wanted to go in there and rest. I knew what the company would be like at its shabby, sticky soda fountain. As I stood there, my eyes fell on a long white canvas sign across from me, and its black-and-red lettering caught my attention.

SEE THE GREAT UNSEEN!.

Come in! This Means You!

FREE TO ALL!.

A museum of fakes, I thought, but also reflected that if it were a show of some kind I could sit down for a while, rest, and fight off this increasing obsession of nonexistent evil. That side of the street was almost deserted, and the place itself might well be nearly empty.

II.

I walked over, but with every step my sense of dread increased. Dread of I knew not what. Bodiless, inexplicable horror had me as in a net, whose strands, being intangible, without reason for existence, I could by no means throw off. It was not the people now. None of them were about me. There, in the open, lighted street, with no sight nor sound of terror to a.s.sail me, I was the shivering victim of such fear as I had never known was possible. Yet still I would not yield.

Setting my teeth, and fighting with myself as with some pet animal gone mad, I forced my steps to slowness and walked along the sidewalk, seeking entrance. Just here there were no shops, but several doors reached in each case by means of a few iron-railed stone steps. I chose the one in the middle beneath the sign. In that neighborhood there are museums, shops and other commercial enterprises conducted in many shabby old residences, such as were these. Behind the glazing of the door I had chosen I could see a dim, pinkish light, but on either side the windows were quite dark.

Trying the door, I found it unlocked. As I opened it a party of Italians pa.s.sed on the pavement below and I looked back at them over my shoulder. They were gayly dressed, men, women and children, laughing and chattering to one another; probably on their way to some wedding or other festivity.

In pa.s.sing, one of the men glanced up at me and involuntarily I shuddered back against the door. He was a young man, handsome after the swarthy manner of his race, but never in my life had I seen a face so expressive of pure, malicious cruelty, naked and unashamed. Our eyes met and his seemed to light up with a vile gleaming, as if all the wickedness of his nature had come to a focus in the look of concentrated hate he gave me.

They went by, but for some distance I could see him watching me, chin on shoulder, till he and his party were swallowed up in the crowd of marketers farther down the street.

Sick and trembling from that encounter, merely of eyes though it had been, I threw aside my partly smoked cigar and entered. Within there was a small vestibule, whose ancient tesselated floor was grimy with the pa.s.sing of many feet. I could feel the grit of dirt under my shoes, and it rasped on my rawly quivering nerves. The inner door stood partly open, and going on I found myself in a bare, dirty hallway, and was greeted by the sour, musty, poverty-stricken smell common to dwellings of the very ill-to-do. Beyond there was a stairway, carpeted with ragged gra.s.s matting. A gas jet, turned low inside a very dusty pink globe, was the light I had seen from without.

Listening, the house seemed entirely silent. Surely, this was no place of public amus.e.m.e.nt of any kind whatever. More likely it was a rooming house, and I had, after all, mistaken the entrance.

To my intense relief, since coming inside, the worst agony of my unreasonable terror had pa.s.sed away. If I could only get in some place where I could sit down and be quiet, probably I should be rid of it for good. Determining to try another entrance, I was about to leave the bare hallway when one of several doors along the side of it suddenly opened and a man stepped out into the hall.

'Well?' he said, looking at me keenly, but with not the least show of surprise at my presence.

'I beg your pardon,' I replied. 'The door was unlocked and I came in here, thinking it was the entrance to the exhibit what do they call it? the "Great Unseen." The one that is mentioned on that long white sign. Can you tell me which door is the right one?'

'I can.'

With that brief answer he stopped and stared at me again. He was a tall, lean man, somewhat stooped, but possessing considerable dignity of bearing. For that neighborhood, he appeared uncommonly well dressed, and his long, smooth-shaven face was noticeable because, while his complexion was dark and his eyes coal-black, above them the heavy brows and his hair were almost silvery-white. His age might have been anything over the threescore mark.

I grew tired of being stared at. 'If you can and won't, then never mind,' I observed a trifle irritably, and turned to go. But his sharp exclamation halted me.

'No!' he said. 'No no! Forgive me for pausing it was not hesitation, I a.s.sure you. To think that one one, even, has come! All day they pa.s.s my sign up there pa.s.s and fear to enter. But you are different. You are not of these timorous, ignorant foreign peasants. You ask me to tell you the right door? Here it is! Here!'

And he struck the panel of the door, which he had closed behind him, so that the sharp yet hollow sound of it echoed up through the silent house.

Now it may be thought that after all my senseless terror in the open street, so strange a welcome from so odd a showman would have brought the feeling back, full force. But there is an emotion stronger, to a certain point, than fear. This queer old fellow aroused my curiosity. What kind of museum could it be that he accused the pa.s.sing public of fearing to enter? Nothing really terrible, surely, or it would have been closed by the police. And normally I am not an unduly timorous person. 'So it's in there, is it?' I asked, coming toward him. 'And I'm to be the sole audience? Come, that will be an interesting experience.' I was half laughing now.

'The most interesting in the world,' said the old man, with a solemnity which rebuked my lightness.

With that he opened the door, pa.s.sed inward and closed it again in my very face. I stood staring at it blankly. The panels, I remember, had been originally painted white, but now the paint was flaked and blistered, gray with dirt and dirty finger marks. Suddenly it occurred to me that I had no wish to enter there. Whatever was behind it could be scarcely worth seeing, or he would not choose such a place for its exhibition. With the old man's vanishing my curiosity had cooled, but just as I again turned to leave, the door opened and this singular showman stuck his white-eyebrowed face through the aperture. He was frowning impatiently. 'Come in come in!' he snapped, and promptly withdrawing his head, once more closed the door.

'He has something there he doesn't want should get out,' was the very natural conclusion which I drew. 'Well, since it can hardly be anything dangerous, and he's so anxious I should see it here goes!'

With that I turned the soiled white porcelain handle, and entered.

The room I came into was neither very large nor very brightly lighted. In no way did it resemble a museum or lecture room. On the contrary, it seemed to have been fitted up as a quite well-appointed laboratory. The floor was linoleum-covered, there were gla.s.s cases along the walls whose shelves were filled with bottles, specimen jars, graduates, and the like. A large table in one corner bore what looked like some odd sort of camera, and a larger one in the middle of the room was fitted with a long rack filled with bottles and test tubes, and was besides littered with papers, gla.s.s slides, and various paraphernalia which my ignorance failed to identify. There were several cases of books, a few plain wooden chairs, and in the corner a large iron sink with running water.

My host of the white hair and black eyes was awaiting me, standing near the larger table. He indicated one of the wooden chairs with a thin forefinger that shook a little, either from age or eagerness. 'Sit down sit down! Have no fear but that you will be interested, my friend. Have no fear at all of anything!'

As he said it he fixed his dark eyes upon me and stared harder than ever. But the effect of his words was the opposite of their meaning. I did sit down, because my knees gave under me, but if in the outer hall I had lost my terror, it now returned twofold upon me. Out there the light had been faint, dingily roseate, indefinite. By it I had not perceived how this old man's face was a mask of living malice of cruelty, hate and a certain masterful contempt. Now I knew the meaning of my fear, whose warning I would not heed. Now I knew that I had walked into the very trap from which my abnormal sensitiveness had striven in vain to save me.

III.

Again I struggled within me, bit at my lip till I tasted blood, and presently the blind paroxysm pa.s.sed. It must have been longer in going than I thought, and the old man must have all that time been speaking, for when I could once more control my attention, hear and see him, he had taken up a position near the sink, about ten feet away, and was addressing me with a sort of 'platform' manner, as if I had been the large audience whose absence he had deplored.

'And so,' he was saying, 'I was forced to make these plates very carefully, to truly represent the characteristic hues of each separate organism. Now, in color work of every kind the film is necessarily extremely sensitive. Doubtless you are familiar in a general way with the exquisite transparencies produced by color photography of the single-plate type.'

He paused, and trying to act like a normal human being, I observed: 'I saw some nice landscapes done in that way last week at an ill.u.s.trated lecture in Franklin Hall.'

He scowled, and made an impatient gesture at me with his hand. 'I can proceed better without interruptions,' he said. 'My pause was purely oratorical.'

I meekly subsided, and he went on in his original loud, clear voice. He would have made an excellent lecturer before a much larger audience if only his voice could have lost that eerie, ringing note. Thinking of that I must have missed some more, and when I caught it again he was saying: 'As I have indicated, the original plate is the final picture. Now, many of these organisms are extremely hard to photograph, and microphotography in color is particularly difficult. In consequence, to spoil a plate tries the patience of the photographer. They are so sensitive that the ordinary darkroom ruby lamp would instantly ruin them, and they must therefore be developed either in darkness or by a special light produced by interposing thin sheets of tissue of a particular shade of green and of yellow between lamp and plate, and even that will often cause ruinous fog. Now I, finding it hard to handle them so, made numerous experiments with a view of discovering some gla.s.s or fabric of a color which should add to the safety of the green, without robbing it of all efficiency. All proved equally useless, but intermittently I persevered until last week.'

His voice dropped to an almost confidential tone, and he leaned slightly toward me. I was cold from my neck to my feet, though my head was burning, but I tried to force an appreciative smile.

'Last week,' he continued impressively, 'I had a prescription filled at the corner drug store. The bottle was sent home to me wrapped in a piece of what I first took to be whitish, slightly opalescent paper. Later I decided that it was some kind of membrane. When I questioned the druggist, seeking its source, he said it was a sheet of "paper" that was around a bundle of herbs from South America. That he had no more, and doubted if I could trace it. He had wrapped my bottle so, because he was in haste and the sheet was handy.

'I can hardly tell you what first inspired me to try that membrane in my photographic work. It was merely dull white with a faint hint of opalescence, except when held against the light. Then it became quite translucent and quite brightly prismatic. For some reason it occurred to me that this refractive effect might help in breaking up the actinic rays the rays which affect the sensitive emulsion. So that night I inserted it behind the sheets of green and yellow tissue, next the lamp prepared my trays and chemicals, laid my plate holders to hand, turned off the white light and turned on the green!'

There was nothing in his words to inspire fear. It was a wearisomely detailed account of his struggles with photography. Yet, as he again paused impressively, I wished that he might never speak again. I was desperately, contemptibly in dread of the thing he might say next.

Suddenly, he drew himself erect, the stoop went out of his shoulders, he threw back his head and laughed. It was a hollow sound, as if he laughed into a trumpet. 'I won't tell you what I saw! Why should I? Your own eyes shall bear witness. But this much I'll say, so that you may better understand later. When our poor, faultily sensitive vision can perceive a thing, we say that it is visible. When the nerves of touch can feel it, we say that it is tangible. Yet I tell you there are beings intangible to our physical sense, yet whose presence is felt by the spirit, and invisible to our eyes merely because those organs are not attuned to the light as reflected from their bodies. But light pa.s.sed through the screen, which we are about to use has a wave length novel to the scientific world, and by it you shall see with the eyes of the flesh that which has been invisible since life began. Have no fear!'

He stopped to laugh again, and his mirth was yellow-toothed menacing.

'Have no fear!' he reiterated, and with that stretched his hand toward the wall, there came a click and we were in black, impenetrable darkness. I wanted to spring up, to seek the door by which I had entered and rush out of it, but the paralysis of unreasoning terror held me fast.

I could hear him moving about in the darkness, and a moment later a faint green glimmer sprang up in the room. Its source was over the large sink, where I suppose he developed his precious 'color plates.'

Every instant, as my eyes became accustomed to the dimness, I could see more clearly. Green light is peculiar. It may be far fainter than red, and at the same time far more illuminating. The old man was standing beneath it, and his face by that ghastly radiance had the exact look of a dead man's. Besides this, however, I could observe nothing appalling.

'That,' continued the man, 'is the simple developing light of which I have spoken now watch, for what you are about to behold no mortal man but myself has ever seen before.'

For a moment he fussed with the green lamp over the sink. It was so constructed that all the direct rays struck downward. He opened a flap at the side, for a moment there was a streak of comforting white luminance from within, then he inserted something, slid it slowly in and closed the flap.

The thing he put in that South American 'membrane' it must have been instead of decreasing the light increased it amazingly. The hue was changed from green to greenish-gray, and the whole room sprang into view, a livid, ghastly chamber, filled with overcrawled by what?

My eyes fixed themselves, fascinated, on something that moved by the old man's feet. It writhed there on the floor like a huge, repulsive starfish, an immense, armed, legged thing, that twisted convulsively. It was smooth, as if made of rubber, was whitish-green in color; and presently raised its great round blob of a body on tottering tentacles, crept toward my host and writhed upward yes, climbed up his legs, his body. And he stood there, erect, arms folded, and stared sternly down at the thing which climbed.

But the room the whole room was alive with other creatures than that. Everywhere I looked they were centipedish things, with yard-long bodies, detestable, furry spiders that lurked in shadows, and sausage-shaped translucent horrors that moved and floated through the air. They dived here and there between me and the light, and I could see its bright greenness through their greenish bodies.

Worse, though; far worse than these were the things with human faces. Mask-like, monstrous, huge gaping mouths and slitlike eyes I find I cannot write of them. There was that about them which makes their memory even now intolerable.

The old man was speaking again, and every word echoed in my brain like the ringing of a gong. 'Fear nothing! Among such as these do you move every hour of the day and night. Only you and I have seen, for G.o.d is merciful and has spared our race from sight. But I am not merciful! I loathe the race which gave these creatures birth the race which might be so surrounded by invisible, unguessed but blessed beings and chooses these for its companions! All the world shall see and know. One by one shall they come here, learn the truth, and perish. For who can survive the ultimate of terror? Then I, too, shall find peace, and leave the earth to its heritage of man-created horrors. Do you know what these are whence they come?'

This voice boomed now like a cathedral bell. I could not answer him, but he waited for no reply. 'Out of the ether out of the omnipresent ether from whose intangible substance the mind of G.o.d made the planets, all living things, and man man has made these! By his evil thoughts, by his selfish panics, by his l.u.s.ts and his interminable, never-ending hate he has made them, and they are everywhere! Fear nothing but see where there comes to you, its creator, the shape and the body of your FEAR!'

And as he said it I perceived a great Thing coming toward me a Thing but consciousness could endure no more. The ringing, threatening voice merged in a roar within my ears, there came a merciful dimming of the terrible, lurid vision, and blank nothingness succeeded upon horror too great for bearing.

IV.

There was a dull, heavy pain above my eyes. I knew that they were closed, that I was dreaming, and that the rack full of colored bottles which I seemed to see so clearly was no more than a part of the dream. There was some vague but imperative reason why I should rouse myself. I wanted to awaken, and thought that by staring very hard indeed I could dissolve this foolish vision of blue and yellow-brown bottles. But instead of dissolving they grew clearer, more solid and substantial of appearance, until suddenly the rest of my senses rushed to the support of sight, and I became aware that my eyes were open, the bottles were quite real, and that I was sitting in a chair, fallen sideways so that my cheek rested most uncomfortably on the table which held the rack.

I straightened up slowly and with difficulty, groping in my dulled brain for some clue to my presence in this unfamiliar place, this laboratory that was lighted only by the rays of an arc light in the street outside its three large windows. Here I sat, alone, and if the aching of cramped limbs meant anything, here I had sat for more than a little time.

Then, with the painful shock which accompanies awakening to the knowledge of some great catastrophe, came memory. It was this very room, shown by the street lamp's rays to be empty of life, which I had seen thronged with creatures too loathsome for description. I staggered to my feet, staring fearfully about. There were the gla.s.s-floored cases, the bookshelves, the two tables with their burdens, and the long iron sink above which, now only a dark blotch of shadow, hung the lamp from which had emanated that livid, terrifically revealing illumination. Then the experience had been no dream, but a frightful reality. I was alone here now. With callous indifference my strange host had allowed me to remain for hours unconscious, with not the least effort to aid or revive me. Perhaps, hating me so, he had hoped that I would die there.

At first I made no effort to leave the place. Its appearance filled me with reminiscent loathing. I longed to go, but as yet felt too weak and ill for the effort. Both mentally and physically my condition was deplorable, and for the first time I realized that a shock to the mind may react upon the body as vilely as any debauch of self-indulgence.

Quivering in every nerve and muscle, dizzy with headache and nausea, I dropped back into the chair, hoping that before the old man returned I might recover sufficient self-control to escape him. I knew that he hated me, and why. As I waited, sick, miserable, I understood the man. Shuddering, I recalled the loathsome horrors he had shown me. If the mere desires and emotions of mankind were daily carnified in such forms as those, no wonder that he viewed his fellow beings with detestation and longed only to destroy them.

I thought, too, of the cruel, sensuous faces I had seen in the streets outside seen for the first time, as if a veil had been withdrawn from eyes. .h.i.therto blinded by self-delusion. Fatuously trustful as a month-old puppy, I had lived in a grim, evil world, where goodness is a word and crude selfishness the only actuality. Drearily my thoughts drifted back through my own life, its futile purposes, mistakes and activities. All of evil that I knew returned to overwhelm me. Our gropings toward divinity were a sham, a writhing sunward of slime covered beasts who claimed sunlight as their heritage, but in their hearts preferred the foul and easy depths.

Even now, though I could neither see nor feel them, this room, the entire world, was acrawl with the beings created by our real natures. I recalled the cringing, contemptible fear to which my spirit had so readily yielded, and the faceless Thing to which the emotion had given birth.

Then abruptly, shockingly, I remembered that every moment I was adding to the horde. Since my mind could conceive only repulsive incubi, and since while I lived I must think, feel, and so continue to shape them, was there no way to check so abominable a succession? My eyes fell on the long shelves with their many-colored bottles. In the chemistry of photography there are deadly poisons I knew that. Now was the time to end it now! Let him return and find his desire accomplished. One good thing I could do, if one only. I could abolish my monster-creating self.

V.

My friend Mark Jenkins is an intelligent and usually a very careful man. When he took from 'Smiler' Callahan a cigar which had every appearance of being excellent, innocent Havana, the act denoted both intelligence and caution. By very clever work he had traced the poisoning of young Ralph Peeler to Mr. Callahan's door, and he believed this particular cigar to be the mate of one smoked by Peeler just previous to his demise. And if, upon arresting Callahan, he had not confiscated this bit of evidence, it would have doubtless been destroyed by its regrettably unconscientious owner.

But when Jenkins shortly afterward gave me that cigar, as one of his own, he committed one of those almost inconceivable blunders which, I think, are occasionally forced upon clever men to keep them from overweening vanity. Discovering his slight mistake, my detective friend spent the night searching for his unintended victim, myself; and that his search was successful was due to Pietro Marini, a young Italian of Jenkins' acquaintance, whom he met about the hour of 2:00 a.m. returning from a dance.

Now, Marini had seen me standing on the steps of the house where Doctor Frederick Holt had his laboratory and living rooms, and he had stared at me, not with any ill intent, but because he thought I was the sickest-looking, most ghastly specimen of humanity that he had ever beheld. And, sharing the superst.i.tion of his South Street neighbors, he wondered if the worthy doctor had poisoned me as well as Peeler. This suspicion he imparted to Jenkins, who, however, had the best of reasons for believing otherwise. Moreover, as he informed Marini, Holt was dead, having drowned himself late the previous afternoon. An hour or so after our talk in the restaurant, news of his suicide reached Jenkins.

It seemed wise to search any place where a very sick-looking young man had been seen to enter, so Jenkins came straight to the laboratory. Across the fronts of those houses was the long sign with its mysterious inscription, 'See the Great Unseen,' not at all mysterious to the detective. He knew that next door to Doctor Holt's the second floor had been thrown together into a lecture room, where at certain hours a young man employed by settlement workers displayed upon a screen stereopticon views of various deadly bacilli, the germs of diseases appropriate to dirt and indifference. He knew, too, that Doctor Holt himself had helped the educational effort along by providing some really wonderful lantern slides, done by micro-color photography.

On the pavement outside, Jenkins found the two-thirds remnant of a cigar, which he gathered in and came up the steps, a very miserable and self-reproachful detective. Neither outer nor inner door was locked, and in the laboratory he found me, alive, but on the verge of death by another means that he had feared.