Page:Weird Tales Volume 5 Number 4 (1925-04).djvu/59

58 a drug on the market. Beauty and the Beast.

Hargrove lost track of all time in his suffering. How long he had drifted thus musing he knew not. At night he returned to his house through habit, and spent the long night pacing the rooms. He would wander into the drawing room at times and stand before his coffin, vainly yearning that he might crawl back into his dead body and breathe again. Then he would enter the bedrooms where his relatives were quartered, seeking comfort there. He could hear them laughingly discussing his death. How much would they get? Already they were eager. Planning to have the will read immediately after his funeral. Yes, they would get it. His dear relatives. Every penny of it. His sweet relatives!

And then back into the drawing room again to pace the deep carpet by his coffin until Anne came. He felt satisfied that she would come. Death has strange drawing powers. It draws forgotten wives back to forgetting husbands.

He was not startled when he heard the key turn in the lock and saw the doors swing open. Of course it would be Anne. He swooped forward to meet her and called her name frantically. He called again—again. No response. The servant. Would she never go? Again—again. Ah, the servant was going now—gone. Again. She heard him. answered him. Tell her, tell her something. What? The will; yes, the will. The servant again. Both going now. Both gone.

He followed his wife to her room and called to her all night in vain.

a coincidence that John Hargrove's will was to be read in the same room from which he had been buried. He thought of this as he watched his eager cousins file in and choose their seats. He noticed the anxious greed in their faces and cursed himself. His wife, dry-eyed and calm, sat apart from the group quietly conversing with the attorney. The large room was no longer dark and somber. Cheerful flames shot from the log fireplace, and the late October sun flooded the room with brightness. The flowers which had yesterday graced his coffin had been removed. Even the gorgeous candelabrum had been hidden from sight.

Hargrove marveled at the change death had worked in his heart. He wished Anne could know him now. He wished she might feel the deep love in his heart and know the gentle thoughtfulness that had enveloped him. Too late. All things come too late. He felt that he could atone for every wrong he had ever done her, now. Yes—now.

His intense misery had given way to more quiet pain. He felt that he was soon to die another death. The small leather ease which the lawyer so carelessly tossed upon the table held poverty for Anne, and eternal suffering for him. It held a scrap of paper with the ravings of a madman scribbled on it, yet with the power to destroy two lives—a living one and a dead one.

A sense of rebellion surged through him when the lawyer quietly opened his brief ease and extracted the document. He paced the floor frantically. The paper must not be read.

"No, no!" he shouted.

The attorney had already begun.

"I, John Hargrove, being of good health and sound mind do hereby—"

Hargrove swooped forward and flung himself desperately upon the man. The paper slid gracefully from his hands and fluttered slowly down into the fireplace. An over-anxious cousin brought out a single charred edge and a burned hand for his pains.