Page:Weird Tales Volume 3 Number 2 (1923-02).djvu/79

 A wealthy Russian Jew told of the loss of his servant maid, a girl of thirteen. One night she left his house on an errand. When she failed to return he became uneasy and set out to look for her with a lantern. Her footprints were plainly marked in the light snow; it could be seen where she left the road, wandering into a copse of fir trees. Here other footprints—much larger and heavier—joined hers. For a time the two trails went on together, then, at a spot where the trees wore so thick no snow had drifted down upon the brown carpet of pine-needles, all trace of the girl, and her companion was lost. At any rate, the girl was never seen again.

The gendarmes sent to search Swiatek's cottage returned with staring eyes and bated breath. In a chest, neatly trussed up, like a fowl ready for the spit, they had found the legs and thighs of a half-grown girl—the child whose head Swiatek had attempted to hide when discovered by the landlord of the Silver Axe. Beneath the earthen floor of the hut they had found caps and parts of clothing sufficient to account for thirteen children and a young woman.

The witnesses disposed of, Swiatek was summoned before the magistrate. For a time he stood dumb before the court, not touched with remorse for his hideous crimes, but paralyzed with fear for himself.

With the notes of the testimony before him, the magistrate commenced interrogating the prisoner, but wordless moans were the only replies his questions evoked. At Inst, by accident, the beggar's lips were opened.

"You must have been insane to commit these acts," the judge remarked.

A crafty look, a gleam of hope, came into the prisoner's little eyes, for, ignorant though he was, he knew the law forebore to punish those whose misdeeds were committed while insane.

"Your Excellency has said no more than the truth," he replied. "I was, indeed, a lunatic when I transgressed so terribly. But now. your Excellency, I am restored. I pray you, let me depart hence. My reason is returned, and I will sin no more."

"Tell us first how you came to do such savage and unchristian acts," prompted the judge. "It is necessary that our records be complete before we dispose of the case."

"Disposing of the case" was a phrase capable of more than one interpretation; but dread of punishment and overwhelming hope of freedom led Swiatek to place the most favorable construction on the words. Smiling amiably at the magistrate. stroking his patriarchal beard as he talked, he related one of the most amazing criminal histories ever heard in a court of law.

Three years before, during the bitter winter of 1846, he had been hastening through the forest to his cottage in Polomyja, just as the sun was setting. The frosts which set in early in autumn had held steadily, and the countryside had suffered greatly. Responses to his whine for alms had been few and small, and he was near to perishing with cold and hunger. As he neared the village he came upon the still glowing embers of a small Jewish tavern which had burned down that morning, and paused to warm himself beside the smoldering ruins. Creeping nearer for extra warmth, he noticed the charred remains of the tavern's keeper, who had perished in the flames.

The scent and sight of the roasted flesh so worked upon his hunger that he was unable to resist tearing off a bit of flesh and tasting it.

As the horrid morsel passed his lips he became, to quote his own words, "as it were, a ravening wolf."

Rending, tearing, even growling in his throat like a brute beast, he satisfied his hunger, then stuffed his beggar's pouch with material for another horrible repast.

Suddenly, the enormity of his act struck him. Flinging the pouch with its grisly load from him. he ran pellmell down the road until exhaustion compelled him to stop.

As he sat upon a wayside stone regaining his breath, the desire for another meal like the revolting one he had just completed began to steal over him like a drunkard's craving for drink. Battling with his conscience, yet yielding, he retraced his steps, recovered his pouch and hastened home.

From that night he had never eaten any other meat. Bread and vegetables he had accepted from kindly disposed peasants who pitied him, but their offers of meat filled him with an almost uncontrollable revulsion.

The little orphan girl whose disappearance had been testified to by her foster parents was his first victim. He had killed and eaten her as unconcernedly us another peasant would have butchered a calf or pig.

Freely, as the magistrate questioned him, he admitted murder after coldblooded murder and ease after case of cannibalism. With a complacency which brought a shudder of horror to all who watched, he rolled back his sleeves and loosened the collar of his blouse that the court might see how sleek and fat he had grown upon his frightful meals.

"And now," he concluded; looking expectantly at the magistrate, "I have told you all, your Excellency. Surely you will let me go?"

"Inhuman monster," the judge replied, "out of your own mouth you have condemned yourself. No madman could have told his tale so reasonably. If there he any justice in the Empire of Austria, you shall die upon the scaffold, and the public executioner will hang his head in shame that his duties force him to lay hands on so vile a wretch as you."

Screaming with terror, Swiatek was, dragged back to his cell, for his terror-palsied legs refused to bear his weight.

Next morning, when the turnkey of the jail made his tour of inspection, he found that justice had been cheated.

Swiatek, the beggar, had hanged himself to the bars of his prison window.

''This is the fourth article of a series that Seabury Quinn is writing for. The fifth will appear in an early issue.''



of green jade, I merely screamed and ran away idiotically, my screams soon dissolving into peals of hysterical laughter.

Madness rides the star-wind claws and teeth sharpened on centuries of corpses dripping death astride a bacchanale of bats from night-black ruins of buried temples of Belial Now, as the baying of that dead, fleshless monstrosity grows louder and louder, and the stealthy whirring and flapping of those accused web-wings circles closer and closer, I shall seek with my revolver the oblivion which is my only refuge from the unnamed and unnamable.



With a sob Ivan went out into the snow. For days he walked the frozen tundra—alone. Only at night did he come to the village for food.

Those who saw him shook their heads. "It is coming back," they said sorrowfully. "He is forgetting the little flower girl."

Then one morning Ivan staggered into the town, gaunt and haggard.

"Call the people together." he said hollowly, and the soldiers noted the glint in his eye.

He picked one of the men from the mass—old Zenovief the cobbler it was—had him stripped and tied to the whipping post.

"Twenty blows." he commanded the soldiers hoarsely; but the sight of blood sickened him.

"No! No!" he cried after a few blows, "I can't!"

He gave the suffering man a piece of gold, and went to his empty cottage. There he sat in a stupor. He knew now that no more could he enjoy the sufferings of others. Maria had killed that—forever.

"Ah, Ivan," he muttered over and over to himself, "what a fool you are!"

Then, finally, with something like a smile: "Ah, Ivan, how I hate you—how I hate you!"

Suddenly a light broke over his face.

"Ha, Ivan," he exulted wildly, "you can kill—kill the one you hate!" The glint in his eye sparkled and danced.

The next morning the peasants found him hanging from a beam of his cottage. His arms were opened wide, and on his face was that pleaded, satiated smile; in his eyes a cold, hateful glint—fixed there forever. 