Page:Weird Tales Volume 4 Number 2 (1924-05-07).djvu/52



HE KEY fitted the door perfectly, so there was nothing to warn me I was mistaken in entering the hotel room I supposed was my own. I know not what mental lapse caused me to mistake my floor. It was presumably, a bit of absent-mindedness for my mind was full of the details of a business meeting just over in the Auditorium. I had delivered the address of the evening, and, like most amateur speakers, was revolving in my thoughts the things I had said and the many others I had inadvertently left unsaid. This room, info which I mistakenly made my entrance, was, as I discovered later, directly beneath my own. The sight that met my astounded gaze as I opened the door held me motionless in a paralysis of surprise.

The unbelievable thing I saw before me was too astonishing, too weird, too utterly monstrous for credence. It was like a horrible replica of some fantastic dream such as visits those who have sought their sleep with over-burdened stomach or troubled mind.

How many of us have waked from uneasy slumber with some terrifying unimaginable picture of stark terror seared for a moment on the retina of our eyes by the unfathomable magic of unconsciousness! How grateful we have been for the mysterious workings of nature which, with our complete awakening, erase these ghastly fantasies from memory's gallery!

Before me—facing me, in fact—from a chair on the farther side of the small table such as are common to all hotel rooms, sat a huge man whose gaze for a moment held my own. A dominating man, this, whose well-trimmed Van Dyke beard lent a professional aspect to features strong and severe as those of any ancient Roman Emperor. He bulked large behind the table like some great figure of Buddha, impressive and awe-inspiring in its quiet forcefulness. He