Page:Weird Tales Volume 7 Number 1 (1926-01).djvu/145

Rh your soul was still in your body, Jaeke? I'm of the opinion that under those circumstances some cord of relationship with the human race would be severed, thus making it impossible for you to enter another body."

"What do you mean?" The hunchback was on his feet.

The judge's son said not a word. He was smiling as he suddenly flipped a revolver from his pocket and shot the prisoner through the heart. Over the face of Rolf Jaeke there came an expression of unspeakable fear; and he was dead.

Young Fowler stood up, calm, hard, cold as ice.

"Gentlemen," he said, "if you wish to arrest me for murder, now is the time. I was well aware that under the conditions the usual care would not be taken; and I could not well permit an evil soul to go wandering through the universe, slaying at will, as this one has done." He looked about. "Am I under arrest?"

"You are not," said the police magistrate, shortly.

I'm rather cold-blooded. Maybe being a police court reporter has done that. I grumbled something about its being too good a death for the cur. Young Fowler looked at me strangely. Those cold eyes of his bored me through and through. His voice when he spoke was hard and deadly cold—cold as an Arctic night.

"Gentlemen, I believe there is a hell," he said. "And I believe that the soul of Rolf Jaeke is now bound through the winds of the outer spaces to the farthest corner of hell. Listen!"

I listened. There was a sound. Was it a wailing? Was it the cry of a soul lost in chaos—an evil soul? A wailing filled with unutterable horror! A lost soul? Or the wind?

FRENCH LOVERS PHOTOS!