Page:Weird Tales v01n04 (1923-06).djvu/64

Rh "My God!" exclaimed Hoyne. "Look there on his throat and chest. The frothy slaver of a hound!"

The doctor took a small porcelain dish from his pocket, removed the lid, and with the blade of his pocket knife, scraped part of the slimy deposit into the receptacle.

"Hadn't we better try to bring him to?" inquired Hoyne.

After they had lifted him back in bed the doctor leaned over and held his ear to the breast of the recumbent man. He took his stethoscope from his case and listened again: Then he straightened gravely.

"No earthly power can bring him to," he said, softly. "Ritsky is dead!"

HE DETECTIVE remained in the house, pending the arrival of the coroner and undertaker, while Doctor Dorp hurried home with his paraphernalia and the sample of slime he had scraped from the corpse. Hoyne was puzzled by the fact that the doctor searched the house and the clothing of the dead man before departing.

The detective was kept busy at the Ritsky apartment until nearly ten o'clock. After stopping at a restaurant for a bit of breakfast and a cup of coffee, he went directly to the doctor's home.

He found the psychologist in his laboratory, engrossed in a complicated chemical experiment. He shook a test tube, which he had been heating over a small alcohol lamp, held it up to the light, stood it in a small rack in which were a number of others partly filled with liquid, and nodded cordially to his friend.

"Morning, Doc." greeted Hoyne. "Have you doped out what we are going to tell the coroner yet?"

"I knew the direct cause of Ritsky's death long ago. It was fear. The indirect cause, the thing that induced the fear, required careful examination and considerable chemical research."

"And it was—"

"Psychoplasm."

"I don't get you, Doc. What is psychoplasm?"

"No doubt you have heard of the substance called ectoplasm, regarding which Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has delivered numerous lectures, or an identical substance called teleplasm, discovered by Baron Von Schrenck Notzing while attending materialization seances with the medium known as Eva.

"While the baron was observing and photographing this substance in Europe, my friend and colleague, Professor James Braddock, was conducting similar investigations in this country. He named the substance psychoplasm, and I like the name better than either of the other two, as it is undoubtedly created or generated from invisible particles of matter through the power of the subjective mind.

"I have examined and analyzed many samples of this substance in the past. The plate I now have under the compound microscope, and the different chemical determinations I have just completed, show conclusively that this is psychoplasm."

"But how—where did it come from?"

"I learned something of the history of Ritsky and his ward yesterday. Let me enlighten you on that score first:

"The man told the truth when he said he was appointed guardian of his niece, and also when he said that he had shot a dog. The dog, in question, was a Russian wolfhound, a present sent to the girl by her parents while they were touring Russia. He was only half grown when he arrived, and the two soon became boon companions, frolicking and playing about the grounds together or romping through the big house.

"Some time after the death of Olga's parents, Ritsky, then editor of a radical newspaper in New York, took up his abode at Villa Rogers. The dog, by that time full grown, took a violent dislike to him and, on one occasion, bit him quite severely. When he announced his intention of having the animal shot the girl wept violently and swore that she would kill herself if Shag, as she had named him, were killed. It seemed that she regarded him as a token of the love of her parents who had sailed away, never to return."

"Shag! That's the name!" broke in Hoyne, excitedly. "After that white thing floated out of the room she made noises like a dog and then answered them, saying 'Good old Shag,' and patting an imaginary head. She sure gave me the creeps, though, when she let out that growl."

"The vengeful Ritsky," continued the doctor, "was determined that Shag should die, and found an opportunity to shoot him with a pistol when the girl was in the house. Shortly after, the faithful creature dragged himself to the feet of his mistress and died in her arms. He could not tell her who had taken his life, but she must have known subjectively, and as a result entertained a hatred for her uncle of which she objectively knew nothing.

"Most people have potential mediumistic power. How this power is developed in certain individuals and remains practically dormant in others is a question that has never been satisfactorily explained. I personally believe that it is often developed because of intense emotional repressions which, unable to find an outlet in a normal manner through the objective mind, find expression in abnormal psychic manifestations.

"This seemed to be the case with Olga Rogers. She developed the power subjectively without objective knowledge that it existed. One of the most striking of psychic powers is that of creating or assembling the substance called psychoplasm, causing it to assume various forms, and to move as if endowed with a mind of its own.

"Olga developed this peculiar power to a remarkable degree. Acting under the direction of her subjective intelligence, the substance assumed the form of her beloved animal companion and sought revenge on its slayer. We arrived a day too late to save the object of her unconscious hatred."

"Too bad you were not there the night before," said Hoyne. "The poor devil would be alive today if you had been on hand with me the first night to dope the thing out."

"We might have saved him for a prison term or the gallows," replied the doctor, a bit sardonically. "You haven't seen this, of course."

He took a small silver pencil from the table and handed it to the detective.

"What's that got to do with—"

"Open it! Unscrew the top. Careful!"

Hoyne unscrewed it gingerly and saw that the chamber, which was made to hold extra leads, was filled with a white powder.

"Arsenic," said the doctor, briefly. "Did you notice the sickly pallor of that girl—the dark rings under her eyes? Her loving uncle and guardian was slowly poisoning her, increasing the doses from time to time. In another month or six weeks she would have been dead, and Ritsky, her nearest living relative, would have inherited her immense fortune."

"Well I'll be damned!" exploded Hoyne.

Doctor Dorp's laboratory assistant entered and handed a package of prints to his employer.

"Here are the proofs of last night's photographs," said the doctor. "Care to see them?"

Hoyne took them to the window and scrutinized them carefully.

All showed Ritsky leaning out of bed, his hand on the light switch, his face contorted in an expression of intense horror—and, gripping his throat in its ugly jaws, was the white, misshapen phantasm of a huge Russian wolfhound!