Page:Weird Tales v01n04 (1923-06).djvu/84

Rh Shortly thereafter, that worthy laid before him a piece of information which Policeman Rafferty was welcome to for just what it was worth and no more. Guisseppi's ghost had been seen oftenest in the immediate neighborhood of Guisseppi's father's residence. If the fool copper thought he could put a pinch over on a ghost, he might do well to search Guisseppi's old home.

So Policeman Rafferty eased himself one day through a narrow passageway, burst in suddenly at the kitchen door and started to search the premises.

He found Guisseppi whiffing a cigaret in a front room.

ES, I killed Cardello," said Guisseppi quietly. "I'll go with you."

"But who are you?" asked the policeman. "You can't be Guisseppi. They topped that boy on the gallows."

"I'm Guisseppi, all right. They brought me back to life with a pulmotor."

Policeman Rafferty's jaw dropped.

"Back to life?"

"Yes. I was as dead as stone. I was gone absolutely for an hour."

"Gone? Gone where?"

"I don't know. Somewhere. I remember standing on the trap. Then it seemed I was falling for a long time, falling—from a star—or a high mountain top—through miles of emptiness into midnight blackness. There wasn't any pain. I seemed to land on a deep soft cushion of feathers. I could feel the darkness. It seemed to whirl and billow round me. I couldn't see myself—or feel myself. But I knew, somehow, I was there in the heart of the darkness. I suddenly found myself on a broad road stretching away into night."

"Must ha' been the road to hell," remarked Policeman Rafferty.

"Maybe so. Along this road, I glided with the swiftness of a bird on the wing. I didn't know where I was going—"

"You were bound for hell," said Rafferty.

"I heard music away off in the dark; wonderful orchestra music, violins, cellos, wind pipes. It grew louder. I never heard such beautiful music. Through the solid blackness ahead, I saw a great mountain peak standing up, red and shining, against the sky.

"Around me came a glare of bright lights. I was blinded by streaks and splashes of color, darting, rolling, weaving into each other, changing all the time. Reds, purples, greens, blues, rolled over me in great, flashing waves. Flaring colors swirled around me in blazing whirlwinds. I was drowned in gorgeousness. It was as if a cyclone had wrecked a thousand rainbows and buried me beneath their ruins."

"What were these lights?"

"Search me. I don't know. I heard a loud, clear call out of the distance. I pushed through the storm of colors. Across a dark plain, I reached the shining, red mountain. I climbed up until I stood on the peak. I felt fine. Something struck me as a joke. I began laughing. Then, bending close above me, I saw the faces of my mother and father and the doctors."

"Well, Guisseppi," said Policeman Rafferty, "gettin' hung once would ha' been an elegant sufficiency for most men. They'd be leery about takin' a second chance. You must be stuck on dropping through a trap—eh?"

"Yes, they'll hang me again, all right. That's a cinch. You might think me a fool for walking with my eyes open right into this second scrape—"

"A hog," corrected Rafferty.

"I don't know. I came back from the dead to kill Cardello. And I killed him. I hated that fellow. I'd like to have tortured the life out of him, killed him by inches. His cries of agony would have been wine to me. It's hell to be hanged, I ought to know. But I can go back to the gallows now with a light heart. I got Cardello, and I'm ready to take my medicine."

Policeman Rafferty bit a generous chew from his plug of tobacco.

"You Eye-talians," he remarked reflectively, "are a nutty bunch."

HE COURT ROOM was crowded. Guisseppi's strange story had been spread to the four winds by the newspapers, and everybody was eager to see this man who had passed through the mystic portals of death.

"My client will plead guilty to the Cardello murder," said Guisseppi's lawyer. "I take it your honor will agree with me that having paid the penalty of the law for his former crime, he can not again be hanged for that old offense."

"I do agree with you," replied the judge. "The sentence was that oh a certain day at a certain hour, he be hanged by the neck until dead. This sentence was carried out. He was hanged. He was officially pronounced dead. It is not for me to say whether death was absolute. Perhaps a spark of life remained which was fanned back to full flame. Possibly his soul actually left the body and was recalled by some cryptic means we do not fully understand.

"But, whatever the truth, his return to life creates a unique situation. I know of no precedent of which the law ever has taken cognizance. So far as I know, this case is the first of its kind in history. Since the sentence pronounced upon this man has been carried out legally in every detail, it is my decision that he can not again be hanged for the crime for which he already has paid the penalty."

"There is one other point which your honor failed to consider," said Guisseppi's lawyer. "It is an axiom of law that a man. can not, for the same crime, be placed in jeopardy twice. A man can be placed in no greater jeopardy than when, with a hangman's noose around his neck, he is dropped through the trap-door of a gallows. So, whether Guisseppi was actually dead or whether a faint flicker of life remained, he is forever immune from further punishment for the crime for which he was placed in this great jeopardy."

"Your point may be well taken," replied the judge.

"Now, your honor, we come to the Cardello murder charge. It is at the prisoner's own desire and against my better judgment that I enter a plea of guilty and throw him upon the mercy of the court. There are perhaps some extenuating circumstances. But he is willing to take whatever punishment the court may see fit to inflict. In view of all the circumstances of this extraordinary case, I make a special plea for mercy."

"I will answer your plea," returned the judge, "by ordering the case stricken from the docket and the prisoner discharged from custody."

A murmur of amazement broke the tense hush of the crowded chamber. Guisseppi's lawyer gasped.

"Am I to understand, your honor—"

"This is not mercy but law," the judge continued. "This man is legally dead. He is without the pale of all law. A dead man can commit no crime. No provision in the whole range of jurisprudence recognizes the possibility of a dead man's committing a crime. No man, in the purview of the law, can return from the dead. If we assume that this man was dead, he will remain dead forever in the eyes of the law. If by a miracle he has returned to life and committed murder, there is no punishment within the scope of the statutes that can be decreed against him.

"He is the super-outlaw of all history. Forever beyond the reach of law, the statutes are powerless to deal with him or punish him in any way. If he should shoot down every member of the jury