Page:Weird Tales Volume 3 Number 3 (1923-03).djvu/21

20 in mind requires no experience, and can easily be performed by anyone in any home—with the aid of an ordinary window sash, a jackknife, one small wooden plug, a common kitchen meat-cleaver, and twenty-five-cents worth of toy balloons—"

Phone for the big black wagon!" shouted Roberts in mock alarm. "Better ask the daffy house to reserve a padded cell with a sunny southern exposure."

"You wrong me," reproached Judson, assuming an injured air. "I have merely enumerated the materials. Now for the touch of the artist. First we throw up the window sash and take a last look upon the outer world. Then we cut the window cords with our ready little jackknife. This, dear friends, brings us to the need for the wooden wedge. Into this bit of wood we drive a tiny tack, and to it we fasten a string. Next we fasten the meat-cleaver to the lower sash of the window frame—with the sharp, or cutting edge, pointing downward. If the sash does not prove to be sufficiently heavy, so that its own weight will cause it to fall when the wooden plug is pulled out—care must be taken to load its upper portion with a few chimney bricks. These are readily obtainable without one's leaving the house.

"Now, fellow-suicides, we are in readiness for the victim's entrance," he announced with mock dramatic effect. "You will observe, from my brief description of the essential properties, that without material expense or unnecessary trouble, a perfectly practical and thoroughly dependable guillotine has been constructed. Hence we pass on to the balloons. Five or six of these innocent little toys will have sufficient lifting power to carry several pounds into the air.

"This being the case, the intending suicide now attaches the little multi-colored gasbags to his head, fastening the balloon strings to his ears, and being careful to knot them neatly, so that they may not escape prematurely. This done, our resourceful hero places his head upon the window sill. The sash, mark you, is still raised and held in place by the plug. The principal's head having been thrust into the outer air, the balloons rise to the full extent of their tethers, and quiver expectantly upon the gentle breeze. They even bob up and down restlessly—impatient as thoroughbreds to be off in a finish race!"

"Some finish, I'll say!" broke in the art manager, but Judson frowned upon his facetiousness. Then, as he paused, with a whimsical smile on his features,

THE FINE ART OF SUICIDE

his auditors pretended to listen breathlessly. A fascinated office boy stood by the side of the editor's desk and stared at his jovial countenance with wide open eyes.

"The kneeling suicide now pulls at the string attached by a tack to the window wedge," Judson went on to explain. "The slightest jerk and the obstruction flies out. In a twinkling, the window falls! Result—prompt and practically painless death, after the approved French method of exterminating criminals, political prisoners, and obsolete nobility.

"But I have told you only the practical part thus far. Now comes the true dash of mystery spice! The head having been severed from the trunk by the sharp edge of the meat-cleaver, attached to the bottom of the window frame, is carried gently off into the air by the little balloons, which now begin to rise, tugging the head with them. Up and up they go, gently—as a graceful bird might fly—soaring over the housetops and swaying in the wind. Picture it, gentlemen! The amused expression of that novel death mask, us the sightless eyes gaze down upon the city, which never even guesses that the decapitated member of the suicide is not simply another balloon which has broken its tether—perhaps from the hand of some disappointed child.

"And," he continued, warming up as his enthusiasm waxed, "behind us remains the room where no signs of violence are seen. There is left the headless body of the recently deceased. Only the torso and limbs of my graduate pupil remain to solve the mystery of the identity of a man who was weary of the world."

"Some stunt!" Roberts nodded his head, and lit a fresh cigarette, "I follow you perfectly. I picture the startled landlady, knocking at the door in the hope of collecting the rent. Horrified by the tragedy, even forgetting the loss of her money, she becomes hysterical and arouses the other boarders. They crowd into the apartment, followed by the bluecoat on the beat, and all of them chatter at once. Yet even the minion of the law is at loss for a solution of the murder, if murder it be. No one has been seen to go in—no one was seen to go out. Yet the head is not to be found, and it obviously has been carried away. Detectives are balked. The coroner is frantic. The public shudders. Newspapers turn handsprings of sheer delight."

"You said it!" enthused Judson. "I tell you, man, the scheme's fool-proof, Anyone can do it, and no one will be the wiser."

"Just a minute," cautioned Roberts. "You've forgotten the inevitable denouement. After hours, or days, perhaps, or whenever the gas gives out, the balloons sink to earth. Let's assume that they burst or become exhausted over a lonely wood or lake—maybe even far out at sea. In that event, the head is sunk without trace, and no clue to the assumed murder ever comes to light. On the other hand, the suicide's dome may drop in the lap of a lovely lady sitting on Riverside drive. It may fall into the open sack of a lowly picker of rags, and lead to his conviction for a crime he didn't commit. It might, by the irony of fate, fall down the very chimney from which bricks were filched to make the window fall. Then it would come rolling home to join its former body—"

"Suppose it does?" shouted the proud inventor of the system, "Isn't it great, whichever way it turns out? Boy, it's worth a three-column spread on page one, with a starred diagram indicating the spot where the corpse was first lamped! Just suppose our hero has gone to his room incognito—without any trifling possession which might serve to identify him. The body itself bears no distinguishing marks—the labels have been ripped off his clothing, and there isn't even a match in any of the pockets. In that event, dear friends, it would never be revealed what inspired genius had resorted to this instantaneous and intensely picturesque practice of self-execution."

"You win ‘the leather medal for sheer idiocy!" opined the art manager, and the little office boy breathed a sigh of relief.

"What d'yuh mean, leather medal?" Judson demanded resentfully. "I'm going to write that story, and do it right away. I'm going to give you some roughs so you can make the pictures—and I'm going to schedule the yarn. It'll be the biggest Sunday sensation ever pulled on this sheet. It'll show the world a thing or two, when it comes to suicides."

"How do you get that way?" snickered his assistant. "You can't run a yarn like that. You'd be laughed at in every newspaper office from here to hell and back—and even the public wouldknow you were kidding them."

"How come?" demanded Judson irritably.