Page:Four Japanese Tales.pdf/56

 Towards the close of my sojourn in Japan I read in the newspapers about the mysterious death of my friend the engineer, whom I met several times after our becoming acquainted upon the occasions of his rare visits to Yokohama and Tokyo. The happening caused considerable excitement and so gradually all that it was possible to ascertain in the case was made public.

The young engineer had just married a highly educated young girl of a Tokyo family held in great respect. The very first morning, before his wife was out of bed, he left the room under some pretext or other; he was in entirely good spirits, in a happy frame of mind, it seems. At least to that effect were the affirmations of the servants, who saw him leave the house and hurry across the courtyard to the stone building for the storage of valuable objects, the go-down which adjoins every more pretentious house in Japan. When he did not return for a long time the young wife was finally filled with dire forebodings, dressed hastily and went after him. Two servants were with her when in the “go-down” she found her husband lying upon his face, already growing cold. He rested on an ancient mirror which had pierced his throat with sharp, metal bamboo leaflets forming the handle. His face was drawn in horror but on his lips there dwelt a happy smile.

According to the autopsy he was stricken by paralysis of the brain; but strange to say, there were some symptoms of death by strangling, which was of course out of the question. And because the marks on the throat looked as if caused by some monstrous strangling grasp, it was rumored among the superstitious folk and the factory workers that the engineer had died a violent death, and that his murderer was, the embodied hate of somebody whom he had wronged, either willingly or unconsciously, or who at least had come to believe that he had been wronged. However, no one thought of stopping to notice that old mirror, and the less did any one think of turning its polished surface to the sun, which would have called forth in the reflection the fairy-like vision of O-Take, the temple dancer.