Page:Weird Tales volume 30 number 04.djvu/117

Rh ''How he has wrecked his life! A mind so brilliant—and yet, with her dead, a closed room.''

''However, I may be wrong. I will wait. By the symptoms I will know. I write this down, for I must do something.''

—''It is he now, his hellish work. I am sure of it. Today my left leg, which for two weeks has felt positively numb, turned a sickening yellow, from the ankle down, which began at once to deepen, until it now flames orange. And oh! the pain is hellish! Yes, I am sure it is 's work. But I will still withhold judgment.''

—''Today a deep, virulent blue cincture has appeared just at the ankle of the affected leg. What a hellish contrast to the orange!''

''It is. I am sure now. Oh, what a fiend!''

—''The cincture has deepened to purple, and seems to cut into the very flesh. It seems sometimes as if the pain would drive me mad.''

—''My flaming foot dropped off tonight, seared at the ankle by the purple cincture, and I flung it outside the cave. I wonder. Perhaps I may yet live to return to the world. Ah, I will be avenged for this!''

—''I am cursed, cursed! Today, just as I teas beginning to believe the hellish thing had left me, it returned, this time in my left hand. Oh, I can see it all: tomorrow and the next day and the next, for just two weeks, my hand will be numb; then will come that frightful yellow; then the orange; then—then the purple cincture!''

''Curse the man who discovered this hellish disease — and turned it into me! I could tear him limb from limb. Oh, I pray to return! I would go now, yet I fear my malady is of a vilely contagious nature. I have not the heart to menace a whole community, perhaps a whole nation, perhaps humanity itself—merely to avenge myself on one man.''

—''I was right! This morning I awoke with my hand that death-yellow. Oh, it is too regular, too certain—too cruelly certain!''

—''Thank God! My hand is gone—out there where my foot went. It happened tonight. Perhaps I may yet return! Perhaps I may yet be avenged. I wonder.''

—''Doomed! That fearful numbness again—this time in my head. I cannot think—I cannot write—I can scarcely breathe. Oh, the pain—the pain——''

it ended in a sputter of ink. Trembling in every limb, filled with a horror and anguish and remorse no man can know, spellbound by the awful tale those few sheets told, I sat there motionless.

"So I had been wrong. Oh, my jealousy, my insane jealousy! As I sat there, all desire of life suddenly left me, and I thrilled with joy at the remembrance of the hand and foot I had come upon, outside the cave. They were his. I had touched them. I was contaminated with the dread disease.

"What was that? I listened, straining every nerve. From the back of the cavern had come a sound.

"Five minutes passed—ten—fifteen (I was oblivious of time)—but it was not repeated. Slightly I relaxed my aching nerves and tried to think. Already I fancied I could feel the fearful poison of the diseased spider working in my veins.

"Suddenly the significance of that last