Page:Weird Tales volume 30 number 04.djvu/62

446 back the same way and entered the house, and at the foot of the stairs he unwrapped the towel and held the thing only by its hair as he climbed the steps. The last thing I saw or heard was the blood dripping on each step as he ascended to the upper hall."

"My God!" I whispered in horror.

"But that's not the worst," Carse cried as he grabbed my arm. "When I awakened the next morning it was late and the shrieks of the newsboys stabbed into my ears. They were yelling about a cruel, brutal murder which had been committed sometime during the night. I swung my feet off the bed to arise, when my eyes fell upon the diary which rested on my night-table. It was open to the confession of Number One as if I had been reading it in my sleep. There was a strange and terrifying dread in my soul as my feet struck the floor. I felt something wet and sticky touch my toes; then I looked down. It was a woman's head staring up at me.

"The room was smeared with blood from one end to the other, and there was a gore-caked knife resting beside the head, and a crimson towel lay across my bedpost. But there wasn't a drop of blood on my hands!

"I couldn't even attempt to explain it. I only knew that a woman h^d been murdered and that her severed head was in my bedroom. I didn't know what to do. I couldn't force myself into the belief that I was the murderer, and I stood stunned with the weird horror of knowing that Emil Drukker's Number One had been re-enacted and that I had played his own role. Where could I turn? Whom could I ask for advice? If I was mad they would commit me to an asylum; if I was not mad they would hang me.

"I carried the head to the cellar and buried it; then I cleaned up the blood and burned the towel. In my wardrobe I found a suit of clothes smeared with fresh blood. I found my shoes and hat splattered with it, and then I found my discarded gloves stained a violent crimson, with each finger stiffened as the blood had coagulated about it. No wonder there wasn't any blood on my hands!

"I went over the house from top to bottom and eradicated every stain that might be evidence against me; then I sat down with the diary in one hand and the morning newspaper in the other. I compared the two crimes. They were identical, even to the burying of the heads. Emil Drukker had done exactly the same as I had done: he carried the head in a towel, he left it in his room overnight, he buried it in his cellar, and he cleaned up the blood the following morning. But there was one ghastly difference: Emil Drukker had committed his crime with full purposeful foreknowledge, whereas I had committed my crime under hypnotic inducement!

"There is no other answer for what has happened in these last six weeks. I have racked my brain to find another solution, but there is none. I am being hypnotized by some unexplainable force, and once each week I come under the power of this evil which directs and commands my being. Last night I went to bed with the full knowledge of what would occur during the night. That is why I locked you in your room. This morning when I awakened I found the head exactly where the other five had lain; then I carried it to the basement and buried it. I cleaned up the blood and burned the towel.

"If you are numbed with horror, try to imagine how I feel about it. Six crimes in six weeks! And I can only thank merciful God that it will end with only one more. Perhaps it is ended now. That German servant who loaned me the diary said it would be only six or seven."