Page:Weird Tales v01n01 (1923-03).djvu/142

Rh its honor of our meeting. My friend produced a quart flask of whisky from his suitcase, saying that it was the duplicate of one he had already sampled, and spoke to me of its age, strength, fine quality, and the high price he had been obliged to pay for it. Thereupon he presented it to me. I thanked him heartily and opened the flask, and we all drunk a couple of rounds from it. All of that day, and the day previous, I had been drinking more or less heavily.

Cards were resumed and we played until after midnight, when, with many a handshake, I bade good-by to my friend, who was obliged to catch a train to reach his destination the following noon. The card game being broken up, we had a farewell round of drinks, and

I stumbled out into the night.

The cool air soon revived my somewhat befuddled brain. Also, I was soon shaking with the cold. Remembering the generous sized flask of whisky in my pocket, the gift of my friend, I uncorked it and took a long drink, rejoicing in the fact that the bottle was still almost two-thirds full.

Reaching home, I went at once to my bedroom. My wife was seated in a chair by the window in her dressing-gown. As I entered. she rose and, without any preliminaries of speech, she asked that I at once give her a divorce so that she might marry Dr. Langley. She said there was no reason why I should not do this, since I might then marry some woman who cared for me, and that she would be happy with the man she had learned to love.

The abruptness of her request, together with the cold, matter-of-fact way in which she put it dumfoundeddumbfounded [sic] me, but, hastily regaining my composure, I flatly refused any such action, told my wife that she must remain true to her marriage vows, and that nothing would ever induce me to give her the divorce she wanted. Furthermore, I told her that the doctor was a scoundrel—that many people believed he had murdered a girl before coming to our town.

At this, my wife became livid with fury, accused me of deliberately besmirching the doctor's character because of jealousy, and declared she would never live with me again.

The next day, however, she seemed much changed. She was very agreeable, even tender, to me. We walked about the little garden of our home, as we had often done in the early days of our marriage, and I felt confident that she had decided to put the doctor out of her mind and allow our married life to go on as usual.

We chatted pleasantly together at the dinner table that evening, and as usual I drank a cup of strong coffee after the meal.

A few moments later a heavy drowsiness came over me and I knew no more.. [sic]…

AWOKE with a feeling of suffocation—as if a thousand tons of weight were resting on my chest.

I gasped for breath. I was suffering torture. All about me was blackness—impenetrable blackness. I moved my hands and encountered boards, above and on every side. Gradually, to my numbed senses, the horrible realization came to me, and the cold sweat started out on my body—I had been buried alive!

The terrible realization had a tendency to clear my mind somewhat, in spite of the difficulty I encountered in breathing. I saw it all now. My wife had given me some powerful drug in my coffee, a drug obtained from the doctor. They had planned and plotted the thing in case I refused to consent to a divorce.

They probably had known I was still alive when I was buried. The doctor, as medical examiner, had filed some fictitious report of death from natural causes, and they had contrived to have a hasty funeral. How I had managed to breathe for so long in the coffin, while under the power of the drug, I did not know. Now that I was fully conscious again I felt myself stifling.

No power of imagination can picture the horror and torture of mind that my terrible predicament forced upon me. I must die a slow, terrible death, while