Page:Weird Tales Volume 4 Number 2 (1924-05-07).djvu/38

 Here's the Conclusion of

R. CLAY, are you awake?" Ebenezer opened his eyes. The little nurse was standing by his bed, and she held a tray in her hand, a tray with dishes on it—a tray suggestive of food. And there was sunshine streaming in through the window, and a sound of passing footsteps in the hall.

Ebenezer stared for a startled second, and then he sat up in bed.

"What—what—time is it?" he gasped.

"Eight o'clock, and I've brought your breakfast." The little nurse smiled.

"But—" said Ebenezer, like one in a daze, and paused, while his checks went slowly red.

The little nurse shook her head. "You see, after the doctors got done with that horrid tube, you were so tired out that you went to sleep," she said.

Understanding came on Ebenezer in a flash. It was morning—and he was alive! Something like an overwhelming sense of chagrin descended upon him. He was alive, and—he was almost sorry. He stared at the little nurse in a rather miserable fashion and nodded, without words.

She set down the tray on the bedside table, went to the closet and brought back his clothes. "Now you dress and eat your breakfast," she suggested, "and I'll go get that money you gave me last night."

"You will not," said Ebenezer, and his tone was almost fierce. "When I give a thing I give it."

"But—"

"But nothin'. I gave it to you an' I reckon that stomach tube shindy put an alibi on everything else. Now I guess I'll dress."

Miss Coombs went out, and Ebenezer rose. He clenched his hands into

knotted fists, and regarded them fixedly before he drew on his shirt. There was something savage in the way he pulled on his trousers. His mood was one of a rapidly mounting rage. He finished dressing and put on his hat.

And then he took it off and stared at the tray on the table. He was facing a serious fact. If he had died according to schedule, everything would have been all right. But, instead of dying, he had slept all night and waked up very much alive. And he hadn't a cent on earth. Yesterday he had given away his every possession—his money—the old home place—even the loose change in his pockets—and here on the table before him was, a perfectly good breakfast going to waste.

He laid his hat on the bed, sat down and ate in a ruminative fashion, his brow contracted in thought. There had been a reason for all he had done, of course—a reason why he had made a fool of himself as he undoubtedly had. And the upshot of his thinking was that he decided to attend to that reason first. All at once to Ebenezer that duty became a pressing need of the present, beyond which the future could wait. The future—he had thought himself able to know it. He finished the coffee in the little pot on the tray, at a gulp, and scowled.

He reached for his hat and rose. He found his suitcase in the closet and let himself into the hall. He found the stairs and went down them with lowered eyes. He didn't want to meet the glances of any one he passed. He was dreadfully embarrassed. Last evening he had come here boldly and announced that he was going to die at one minute past eleven, and—he hadn't kept the date. Instead, he had gone to sleep.

He literally sneaked out of the front door past the office and gained the street. He set off downtown with the suitcase in his hand.

And with every step he took, his chagrined rage mounted. By turns he felt cold and hot. He had made a fool of himself. He had been a dupe, a sucker. He was broke. He was walking downtown now because he had not the price of a ride. He set his jaws, and plodded onward with a heavily purposeful stride.

He reached the boarding house district at last, and mounted a set of steps to a pair of old-fashioned double doors. One of them was open, and Ebenezer went in and opened another without troubling to knock.

The room into which it opened had probably been at one time the parlor of the house. Now, however, it served a purpose of another sort. In its center was a table supporting a sphere of glass on a jet black cushion. Oriental hangings and various charts marked with peculiar signs and symbols were distributed around the walls.

Ebenezer glanced about.

The door of an adjoining room opened and a man appeared. He was dark, round-faced, stout. He was clad in a bathrobe and pajamas.

It was Peri the Persian. Ebenezer knew him, even though in his present garb, untricked of his professional trappings, he seemed a lot less Persian, and very much more just ordinary soft-fibered man.

For a moment he eyed Ebenezer, then he advanced with a tentative greeting. "Good morning. Have I not seen you before, my friend?"

"You have." Ebenezer put down his suitcase. "And now you see me again." There was something ominous in his manner.

Peri the Persian appeared to mark it, even as he essayed a further question: "And what advice can I give you on this occasion?"

Ebenezer glared as he answered the suggestion: "You can't give me none. I've had enough already, an' it's got me in dead wrong. Th' last time I was here, you told me I was due to die at one