Page:Weird Tales v01n01 (1923-03).djvu/118

Rh “But I didn’t.” It was like wrestling with one’s conscience, Defoe thought, this interminable denying of Bland’s innocence. He was wearying of it all; his mind was revolting at the repeated “third degree” of this mysterious Voice. Soon, he feared, his brain would refuse to function.

“But you've said you did.” the Voice insisted.

“When? It’s a lie!” exclaimed Defoe.

The Voice chuckled, sending a shudder through the man crouching in the corner of the berth.

“You probably don’t know, Mr. Defoe, that for a number of years you have had the treacherous habit of talking in your sleep—talking volubly, excitedly, sometimes almost reconstructing entire incidents in your talk for the benefit of anyone who might happen to be listening.”

“Well?” asked Defoe.

“Simply this: Manuel has overheard enough to—”

“Manuel? broke in Defoe. “What's he got to do with it!”

"I forgot to tell you,” the Voice apologized. “The Cuban is my confederate—former member of the Secret Police of Havana, you know. I saved his life during the Spanish war and—well, he’s paying back an old debt, as he calls it. He let me in and out of your house, and tipped me off about this trip. You see, Manuel had overheard you say, in your sleep, that you convicted an innocent man of murder. So I knew your conscience—”

“Are you trying to be my conscience? Are you trying to plague me into confessing? Are you—”

“No,” answered the Voice, “unless you choose to call me your conscience. I’m willing. You seem to be in need of one. Do you know, Mr. Defoe,” and the Voice took on a more affable tone, “you have been fearfully distracted the last few weeks or months. You need a rest—a long rest!”

Defoe was silent, hunched in the retreat of the berth. He had no fight left in him. Presently he fell to whimpering quietly, as a child does when it is punished beyond endurance and is too frightened to cry. The Voice, it seemed, missed the old combativeness, gone so quickly after Defoe’s late outburst, so it prodded the hunted man with its chief weapon—not its pistol, but its chuckle. This time it chuckled devilishly, aggravatingly, and it rasped against the tender sensibilities of the sniveling Defoe like salt in an open wound.

Then something broke what little bonds of restraint remained in Defoe. He sprang, catlike, to the outer edge of the berth and lunged for the arm that held the pistol. In the darkness his head struck the cross-support of the berth above and he slumped forward, half dazed by the blow.

Again the chuckle sounded in his ears, now ringing with the stunning impact; and again Defoe lurched forward, only to fall dizzily to the floor. He clambered clumsily to his feet, gripping the berth for a momentary prop.

Soon his head began to clear. He was assembling out of the maze of ache and buzzing in his ears and brain some sort of cohorentcoherent [sic] idea of where he was and what had been happening.

“Now I know what it all means!” he burst forth presently. “You—you sneaking, cackling little conscience, get out of here! I’m going to cheat you if I have to become a drunkard or a dope fiend the rest of my life! I’m not going to let a conscience, or a voice or a chuckle, drive me to insanity—or to confessing—or to suicide!”

Defoe was steady enough now, supporting himself against the upper berth. His voice grew more strident.

“No, I’m not going to let my conscience get the best of me! You thought you could keep after me endlessly, but I'll get rid of you. I’m never going to be bothered with you or your voice again! Never! Now get out of here! Get out of here, I say!"

The chuckle—a croaking, sepulchral chuckle it was now—answered him out of the darkness.

"You might tell me, before I go, if you know who really did kill the man Bland was convicted of murdering,”