Page:Weird Tales Volume 2 Number 2 (1923-09).djvu/23

22 features were drawn and haggard. She stood there on the threshold, gazing hesitantly at me, until finally she swayed, as though immeasurably weary. Jumping to my feet, I led her to a chair.

"Now, my dear girl," I urged, sitting down beside her, "tell me—tell me everything."

"I—I can't," she whispered, and buried her face in her hands. "I thought I could—but I can't."

"You must!" I insisted, and started to stroke the light spungold of her hair that was resting on my shoulder.

She drew suddenly away from me, and sprang to her feet. A shudder passed through her slender frame.

"Please," she begged, "don't touch me! And don't look at me that way. They all know. Everybody looks at me that way. I'm a bad girl!—a bad girl!—Oh God!—"

My telephone bell rang just at that moment, and I rose and went into the inner office to answer it. When I returned, Aileen Mallory was gone. That day she disappeared from Fairdale. It was as mysterious as it was sudden, for she left no trace.

IX days later, Peter Andrus returned. Late in the afternoon he walked into my office, and stood silently surveying me, while I tried to frame words of welcome.

"Peter, my boy!" I exclaimed at last. "This is unexpected!"

"I had to return," he began, "Your letter—the letter—"

"My letter!" I echoed in amazement. There could be but one letter to which he would refer in such a manner. "Why, you couldn't have received that letter! It is less than a month since I put it in the mail!"

"Yes; you are right; I didn't receive it," he went on, in a dull monotone. "But I knew—"

I was watching him in fascination. A great change had come over him. He was bronzed, and older; his eyes were pools of living fire that seemed to burn into my very soul.

"Yes, I know," he continued. "I have learned much—these past months—I have learned much!" He sighed.

"You have heard, then, about—about Aileen?" I inquired.

"No, I have heard nothing. I came directly to your office—to talk to you, before—Well, before I did anything."

I stared at him, unable to understand. A question formed on my lips, but he spoke again before I could give it utterance.

"Tell me his name!" he demanded fiercely. "Tell me what happened to her—Tell me everything!"

He sat back and scanned my face closely with those burning eyes of his. I had thought to break the news to him by easy degrees, to withhold parts of the story until later. But now I found myself, almost against my will, detailing to him minutely every event of the past three months. My own words sounded oddly to my ears, as if my voice had become detached from the rest of my being, and were a third person beyond my control. While I was speaking he did not interrupt me, and when I had concluded, he sat, silent, for several minutes. He seemed totally lost in his thoughts, and oblivious to my presence.

Rising to his feet, he began to pace nervously from one end of the room to the other, his hands clasped behind his back. Presently he stopped before my desk, and once more turned his gaze on me. His expression was uncanny. In the depths of his eyes lurked madness, stark and wild. I shrank back in dismay.

Then he broke the silence, speaking slowly, each word distinct and vibrant as the toll of a bell. He said: "In the sight of God, from this mo- ment on I am a murderer!"

"Peter, not that!" I argued wildly. "Think——"

At that he laughed, scornfully, and, it seemed, pityingly.

"You fail to understand me," he interposed. "I did not say 'in the sight of man.' And now I am going out for a while, to—to make a call."

Still under his spell, I watched him put on his hat and stride from the place. A minute later I heard him crank my old runabout and start down the street. It was perhaps ten or fifteen seconds after this that my daze seemed to clear away and I found strength to rise to my feet and go out on to the veranda. Peter was not in sight.

An overwhelming fear took possession of me. Grasping the handrail for support, I tottered down the steps, and then started up the street toward Hemenway's residence.

It was several blocks distant—and I am not as young as I used to be. When I arrived at last, I found the front door ajar. My runabout was at the curb, behind Hemenway's big roadster. I climbed the stairs as rapidly as I could, and started into the living room.

I was too late. On the instant that I set foot on the threshold I saw in the semi-gloom a flash, and the crack of a pistol shot broke the silence. Then a tall form—I could not tell whose—fell headlong onto the floor, and lay silent, With palsied fingers I groped for the electric light switch beside the doorway, and turned it on.

The form on the floor was that of Donald Hemenway. He still held in his hand a small, blue-steel automatic pistol. He was quite dead, for the bullet had entered his temple.

At that moment his man-servant, who had been in the rear of the house, rushed into the room.

On the center table we found a note, in Hemenway's handwriting. The ink was not yet dry. It was prima facie evidence of suicide; terse but sufficient:

"'I, Donald Hemenway, being unfit to live, am this day dying by my own hand, and may God have mercy on my soul.'"

And Peter—we found him collapsed in a large Morris chair. His eyes were open, and he seemed to be staring directly at the fallen body. There was on his face an expression of blank amazement, of surprise—the same questioning look one sometimes sees on the face of a man who has died from heart failure. He was as pale as death itself; and after I had spoken to him, and had received no answer, I feared that he was dead.

It seemed not, though. His pulse and respiration were normal. Still, when I shook him violently, he did not stir. He was, it would appear, in a state of coma from which he could not be awakened.

In fact, he did not awaken until nine days later. And when he did, he was not the Peter Andrus I had known. The light had faded from his eyes; his body, though perfect, as our medical tests showed, was a mere pulsating shell of flesh, blood and bone. He—perhaps I should not say "he"—was without mind, without memory, without will-power even to raise a hand; a living temple of God, from which the spirit seemed to have flown.

He lived, thus, until one day his body was found, stiff and cold, in bed. His powerful heart, minus the stimulus of spirit, had ceased its mechanical pulsating.

Just what transpired in Hemenway's living room that afternoon, before I arrived, I can only guess. Of course, there still remains the note—in Hemenway's own handwriting. Yet there is a strange fear in my mind; I cannot cast off the doubt that pervades it.

Was Peter Andrus correct when he proclaimed himself a murderer "in the sight of God?" Or did he die at peace with his Maker, and did his soul—

But there again, I have forgotten. I am an old man, strong in the faith, and may I be forgiven for such heresy; but I do not know that Peter Andrus, at the time of his death, had a soul.