Page:Weird Tales Volume 5 Number 3 (1925-03).djvu/108

Rh The doctor—somehow this account had mounted up to much more than Milton had anticipated. There must have been many visits to the office of which Agnes' husband was ignorant; she must have kept her sickness from him a much longer time than he had realized. To the doctor’s statement Milton had pinned, with sardonic humor, bills from the druggist, the florist, the undertaker.

Then there were coal bills; laundry bills; ice bills. The sum of those items marshaled itself before him with malignant triumph, conveying to his shrinking spirit the overwhelming prevision of defeat.

Men were being turned away everywhere. He might be months finding another such position as he had been holding for four years. He might raise money to settle that appalling total of debt by paying the exorbitant interest rate of some loan shark, but even this would be only a temporary relief. Discovery of his castle of pretense was inevitable, and to him disclosure of the real facts meant such complete, such utter ruin, that the bare idea bowed him down into the very dust of humiliation. He could see Benson’s smile

was only one way out. Death! It was distasteful to him, because his death under present circumstances would mean the disclosure of what he had for three years been struggling to conceal. His death, with the revelation of that appalling sum total of debt, would make him the subject of derision for his rival.

If there were only some way to escape without baring his sordid secret to the world! He whipped his dulled mind into unwilling concentration. And then—suddenly—he had it! Within the dusk the little heater cast a circle of friendly radiance. Milton threw a glance upward The lamp hook in that great beam across the middle of the ceiling looked strong enough. In the laundry there was always plenty of good rope. He would bring up a stepladder

Half an hour later he jimmied open from the outside one of the study windows giving on the garden; the gusty November air swirled into the room, setting the curtains a-flutter. Upon the floor under his writing desk he laid a ten-dollar bill as if it had been accidentally dropped by hurried fingers. The balance of his last week’s salary he tore carefully into small pieces and burned, scattering the ashes on the night wind from the open window. He pulled out both desk drawers, tossing their contents upon table and floor as if some unlicensed intruder had gone through them hastily.

Upon the bronze tray on his desk he laid a sheet of paper, inscribed with a few terse, carefully thought out words. He had disposed of all his securities, he wrote, to charities in which he and his wife had been interested, but had left sufficient cash in the desk drawer to settle all outstanding accounts against his estate. He chuckled as he wrote, a humorless sound, and then, shrugging his thick shoulders, finished: "I cannot live without Agnes. I am going to join her."

In those last moments he was capping the edifice of sham with the most marvelous of cupolas; he was putting the finishing touch to a work which for three years had been the driving force of his life. From boyhood he had had the worst of it with Benson, always; now Benson would be unable to smile in that slow, exasperating way of his. No, Benson would be obliged to think of him with astonished admiration.

He felt malicious enjoyment as he surveyed the indications of burglary, and the note that so well covered the traces of his supposed wealth. The fools would believe he had killed himself out of grief at the loss of his wife;