Page:Weird Tales volume 24 number 03.djvu/44

Rh caused the garde-malade to have a fit, he laughed and mouthed at her through the glass skylight, which was tightly closed. When he first appeared and threatened Madame Arabella, he also spoke to her through the window, and——"

"But the window was open," I protested.

"Yes, but screened," he answered with a smile. "Screened with iron, if you please."

"What difference did that make? Tonight I saw him force his features partway through the screen——"

"Préecisément," he agreed. "But it was a screen of copper; I saw to that."

Then, seeing my bewilderment: "Iron is of all metals the most earthy," he explained. "It and its derivative, steel, are so instinct with the essence of the earth that creatures of the spirit world can not abide its presence. The legends tell us that when Solomon's Temple was constructed no tool of iron was employed, because even the friendly spirits whose help he had enlisted could not perform their tasks in close proximity to iron. The werewolf, a most unpleasant sort of creature which is half a demon, can be slain by a sword or spear of steel. The witch can be detected by the pricking of an iron pin—never by a pin of brass.

"Very well. When first I thought about this evil dead one's reappearances, I noted that each time he stared outside the window. Glass, apparently, he could not pass—and glass contains a modicum of iron. Iron window-wire stopped him. 'He are not a ghost, then,' I inform me. 'They are things of spirit only, they are thoughts made manifest. This one is a thing of hate, but also of some physical material as well; he is composed in part of the emanations from that body which lies in the tomb and for which the Devil of hell and the devils of decay fight, each for their due shares. Voilà, if he have physical properties, he can be destroyed by physical means.'

"And so I set my trap. I procure a screen of copper, through which he could make entrance to the house—but I charged it with electricity—I increase the potential of the current with a step-up transformer, to make assurance doubly sure—and then I wait for him to try to enter, and electrocute himself."

"But is he really destroyed?" I asked dubiously.

"As the candle-flame when one has blown on it," he replied. "He was—how do you say it?—short-circuited. No convict in the chair at Sing Sing ever died more thoroughly than that one did tonight, my friend."

"It seems queer, though, he should have come back from the grave to haunt those two poor kids and break up their marriage, when he really wanted it," I murmured wonderingly.

"Wanted it?" he echoed. "Ha, yes, he wanted it as the hunter wants the bird to step within his snare."

"But he gave them such a handsome present when little Dennis was born——"

"Oh, my good, kind, trusting friend, are you, too, deceived?" he laughed.

"Deceived——"

"But certainly. That money which I gave to Madame Arabella was my own. I put it in that envelope."

"Then what was in the message which he really left?"

The little Frenchman sobered suddenly. "It was a dreadful thing, that wicked jest he played on them," he told me solemnly. "The night that Monsieur Dennis left that packet with me I determined that the old one meant him injury; so, when he went, I steamed the package open and destroyed Monsieur Warburg's