Page:Weird Tales Volume 6 Number 3 (1925-09).djvu/69

357 across the street as I unlocked my front door.

"The shrilling of my telephone bell greeted me as I stepped from the vestibule. 'Hello?' I called.

This is Miss Sandler, Dr. Applegate,' a voice came over the wire. 'Mr. O’Loughlin has died. Shall I—'

I’ll be right over,' I said.

while I was out of the room, doctor,' the nurse, told me. 'I made sure Mr. O’Loughlin was sleeping easily before I slipped downstairs at midnight to pour myself a cup of coffee—I was gone less than five minutes by my wrist watch. When I came back he seemed still sleeping, but a second look told me he’d never wake again in this world.'

"She busied herself with the bottles on the bedside table a minute, then looked up at me, almost diffidently. 'Did Mr. O’Loughlin say anything to you about a comb this afternoon?'

Yes, he said something about a sign, and as it was preying on his mind, I took the thing home with me.'

You did?' she replied incredulously.

Yes; why?'

Why—why,' she seemed at a loss for words—'you’re sure you took that comb home with you, doctor?'

Of course I’m sure,' I answered.

Well, sir, when I came back from drinking my coffee—just after I noticed Mr. O’Loughlin had gone—I happened to look down on the foot of the bed, and—and I saw this there.' She lifted a cushion from the couch and produced the exact duplicate of the comb I’d taken from O’Loughlin’s house that afternoon.

I’ve been nursing for nearly ten years, doctor,' she went on,—'two years in the army during the war—and I didn’t think anything could unstring my nerves; but–well, Mr. O’Loughlin told me about this comb tonight, and I thought it was funny—then. Now I don't know what to think. It gives me the creeps.'

You’re not the only one who has the creeps,' I told her as I took the comb. "" [sic]Call Costello’s undertaking establishment and tell them I’ll have the death certificate ready when they get here.'

we'd completed the clerical details I drove Miss Sandler to her apartment, then hustled back to my office. 'Now we’ll see what’s what,' I promised myself as I took from my pocket the comb the nurse had found on O’Loughlin’s death bed and began to turn the knob of my safe.

"My fingers seemed all thumbs and my hand shook in spite of myself. I laid the comb on the corner of my desk, grasped the safe knob in both hands, and spun the combination.

"There was the blue velvet case, exactly as I had placed it in the safe ten hours earlier. I fairly snatched it open in my eagerness. In its setting of white satin, the tortoise-shell comb lay glistening in the light.

That settles that,' I murmured: 'now for the other one.' I turned to the desk, then blinked in stupefaction. The comb I’d laid there two minutes before was gone.

"High and low, over every inch of my office, I searched for that bit of feminine frippery like the woman in the parable hunting her lost piece of silver. Daylight was coming through the office windows before I gave up.

"Explain it any way you will, or don’t explain it at all. I can swear I locked up one physical, tangible comb in my safe that afternoon; Miss Sandler found exactly the same comb on the bed beside O’Loughlin’s body, and I will take oath that I carried that very comb home with me. But from the moment I turned my back on it to open my safe, I never saw that second comb again."