Part 19

And while he lay there he witnessed in that untracked wilderness a diabolical spectacle appalling as hell itself!

Grisly, indescribable Things--satyrs and ogres and demons and fiends--appeared in countless numbers, and held orgies that were Madness intensified. Now they were reveling and cavorting in wanton abandon; anon battling among themselves in murderous ferocity.

After a time he viewed a sight still more horrible. Off to the right, he saw a monstrous snake’s head, as huge as the body of a hippopotamus, rise up from the swamp and gaze on ravenously at the riotous revel.

An instant later the licentious carousal was become wildest terror. The forest was alive with frightful reptiles--gigantic, stupendous things that passed the extent of all imagination. Down they swooped upon their terrified prey, their enormous, slippery bodies undulating in great writhing leaps.

The horde of unearthly Things, disporting in hellish debauchery a moment before, were swiftly swallowed up by the serpents. Left in possession of the swamp, they flopped about venomously for a time, demolishing and laying waste all about them.

They then fell upon one another in unspeakable combat, wriggling and squirming slimily together, their repulsive, green-black lengths intertwined like enormous angle worms. And they killed and devoured each other, until at last there was left but one hideous, swollen monster.

It leaped and dashed about, lashing its great tail furiously, tearing down giant trees as though they were weeds. And as the young man watched, the incredible thing seemed to swell larger and larger. And then he saw it stop suddenly in its Brobdingnagian gambol and rigidly poise its hideous head. And he looked straight into its horrifying eyes!

They were fixed steadily upon him. But a moment it staid thus; then its head dropped, and he saw its mammoth body undulating swiftly toward him through the swamp.

He strove to cry out, but could utter no sound. He tried to move, but his body was as lead.

On came the thing with frightful rapidity; parts of its writhing length now sinking in the quagmire, now towering high above it. Now he could see that massive head swinging from side to side. Now only a dark, slimy greenish mass, describing an arch above the swamp, showed its location.

Now it was close upon him. Its vast head swooped up a scant distance away. Its fulsome eyes blazed upon him with a furious fire. Its great drooping jaws swung open. They bristled with venomous fangs.

The monster gathered itself in a dozen gigantic coils and lept through the air--

“GOD!” he shrieked.

“There, there,” soothed a tender voice. “Don’t excite yourself. You’ll be all right presently. Just remain quiet, that’s all.”

A cool hand was laid gently upon his brow. He looked up at the young nurse who sat beside his cot.

Without saying a word, he stared for quite a long time at her face, until her cheeks were as crimson as the ribbon at her throat. When at length he spoke, he was half laughing, half sobbing, and the syntax of his utterance would scarcely have delighted a professor of English at Harvard University.

“Well, I’ve been, girl,” said he. “Got a round trip ticket. But never, never again. What’d you run away for? Yep, I’ve had my fill; no more metaphysics. _Phew!_ Such reptiles! Big as this room, some of ’em. I looked three years, and it ran me crazy. _Ugh!_ those snakes and lizards. Hired detectives, too, but it was no use. And I thought it was all sunshine and flowers and sweet music. You won’t run away again, will you? Could you get me a little brandy, Lily May? I’m feeling a bit faint.”

LAST EPISODE.

The young man made a mistake about the newspapers. One inch was all he got, tucked snugly between a patent medicine advertisement and the notice of a sheriff’s sale. It read:

“An unidentified youth attempted to take his life in a North Side rooming-house last night by inhaling gas. The landlady smelled the odor of gas and called the police. Miss Lily May Kettering, a nurse at the National Emergency Hospital, who seems to know the young man, although refusing to divulge his identity, reports that he is on the road to recovery.”

_There’s an Eerie Thrill in_

_The_ Scarlet Night

_By_ WILLIAM SANFORD

Dr. Langley was in love with my wife.

This had been very evident to me for many weeks. Also it was most evident to me that his love was entirely reciprocated.

The doctor was a young and handsome fellow, who bore the reputation of being more or less unscrupulous. An unpleasant story had followed him from another city--the story of the drowning of a young girl. Although the coroner’s verdict had been that of accidental drowning, there were those, it was said, who thought that the doctor knew much more of the matter than had been brought to light, and rumor had it that he had left the place because he was no longer popular there.

The doctor had a pleasing personality, however, and a way with him that had the effect of disarming any prejudice against him. He was, in brief, a ladies’ man, possessing all of the little attentions and flatteries so dear to the heart of women. And he gave them all with a subtle manner of sincerity that made them doubly potent.

The doctor’s practice was fairly large, and he had also succeeded in having himself appointed local medical examiner for our town. He was deeply interested in his chosen profession, and still fascinated by the dissecting-room. He owned a handsome touring-car with which, as I knew, my wife was very familiar.

My wife was twenty-five--fifteen years my junior--pretty and with much charm of manner, yet possessed of a certain hardness of nature and lack of sympathy for the suffering of others, unusual in a young woman of good breeding. She came of excellent family, was well educated and always had associated with good people.

I had been somewhat addicted to strong drink before we were married, but had managed to keep it from her to a certain extent. She knew that I drank, but thought that it was no more than many men do at their clubs. Of my several wild sprees out of town she had never heard.

We had been married two years when Dr. Langley took up his practice in our town, and from the moment he made a professional call on my wife, for some minor ailment, they had become intensely interested in each other.

My drinking habits had increased, rather than diminished, since my marriage, and I no longer made any effort to keep occasional lurid fits of intoxication from her. My love for liquor became as much a part of my life as food or sleep. My position as assistant manager in a large wholesale house was fairly secure, however, and one not easy to fill, which perhaps accounted for the firm still holding me.

One cold, bleak evening in November, while I was playing cards at my club--and, thanks to the rum-runners who thrived in our town, drinking whisky--I heard a strangely-familiar voice call my name in greeting, and, looking up, I was overjoyed to behold an old friend of bygone days, whom I had not seen in several years. He had dropped off on his way to another city.

The time was ripe for a celebration in honor of our meeting. My friend produced a quart flask of whisky from his suitcase, saying that it was the duplicate of one he had already sampled, and spoke to me of its age, strength, fine quality, and the high price he had been obliged to pay for it. Thereupon he presented it to me. I thanked him heartily and opened the flask, and we all drank a couple of rounds from it. All of that day, and the day previous, I had been drinking more or less heavily.

Cards were resumed and we played until after midnight, when, with many a handshake, I bade good-by to my friend, who was obliged to catch a train to reach his destination the following noon. The card game being broken up, we had a farewell round of drinks, and I stumbled out into the night.

The cool air soon revived my somewhat befuddled brain. Also, I was soon shaking with the cold. Remembering the generous sized flask of whisky in my pocket, the gift of my friend, I uncorked it and took a long drink, rejoicing in the fact that the bottle was still almost two-thirds full.

Reaching home, I went at once to my bedroom. My wife was seated in a chair by the window in her dressing-gown. As I entered, she rose and, without any preliminaries of speech, she asked that I at once give her a divorce so that she might marry Dr. Langley. She said there was no reason why I should not do this, since I might then marry some woman who cared for me, and that she would be happy with the man she had learned to love.

The abruptness of her request, together with the cold, matter-of-fact way in which she put it dumfounded me, but, hastily regaining my composure, I flatly refused any such action, told my wife that she must remain true to her marriage vows, and that nothing would ever induce me to give her the divorce she wanted. Furthermore, I told her that the doctor was a scoundrel--that many people believed he had murdered a girl before coming to our town.

At this, my wife became livid with fury, accused me of deliberately besmirching the doctor’s character because of jealousy, and declared she would never live with me again.

The next day, however, she seemed much changed. She was very agreeable, even tender, to me. We walked about the little garden of our home, as we had often done in the early days of our marriage, and I felt confident that she had decided to put the doctor out of her mind and allow our married life to go on as usual.

We chatted pleasantly together at the dinner table that evening, and as usual I drank a cup of strong coffee after the meal.

A few moments later a heavy drowsiness came over me and I knew no more....

* * * * *

I awoke with a feeling of suffocation--as if a thousand tons of weight were resting on my chest.

I gasped for breath. I was suffering torture. All about me was blackness--impenetrable blackness. I moved my hands and encountered boards, above and on every side. Gradually, to my numbed senses, the horrible realization came to me, and the cold sweat started out on my body--_I had been buried alive!_

The terrible realization had a tendency to clear my mind somewhat, in spite of the difficulty I encountered in breathing. I saw it all now. My wife had given me some powerful drug in my coffee, a drug obtained from the doctor. They had planned and plotted the thing in case I refused to consent to a divorce.

They probably had known I was still alive when I was buried. The doctor, as medical examiner, had filed some fictitious report of death from natural causes, and they had contrived to have a hasty funeral. How I had managed to breathe for so long in the coffin, while under the power of the drug, I did not know. Now that I was fully conscious again I felt myself stifling.

No power of imagination can picture the horror and torture of mind that my terrible predicament forced upon me. I must die a slow, terrible death, while those who were responsible for the hellish crime enjoyed themselves and went unpunished. The minutes seemed to drag into hours, as I lay there struggling for breath.

Suddenly, out of the horrible black stillness, I heard a noise above me. Listening, with every racked nerve on edge, I heard it come nearer--nearer. At first I could not make it out--could not understand--and then, suddenly, the truth dawned upon me with a horrible intensity: _The body snatchers were after me for the dissecting-room!_

I tried to cry out, but was unable to make a sound, because of my stifling condition. They reached the coffin, and I heard the shovel scraping against it. Then I felt myself being slowly lifted upward, and the coffin was dumped on the ground.

Now I heard a voice, and my blood ran cold, _for it was the voice of Dr. Langley_.

“The drug was an Oriental one,” he was saying. “It causes a semblance of death that lasts a long time, but he probably died a few minutes after he was buried. I am anxious to dissect to see what effect such a drug has on the human body!”

And then, with a terrible shock, I heard the voice of my wife:

“I don’t care. Do as you wish. I hated him from the moment he refused to give me a divorce. I could even watch you cut up his body!”

I struggled to rise in the coffin, gasping for the breath of life, and then the lid was pried off, and, summoning all my dying strength, I rose to my feet, waving my arms wildly back and forth and inhaling a great breath of life-giving night air.

The doctor let the shovel fall to the ground without a word, and staggered back and sank to his knees, while my wife gave a hideous scream of terror. Then she snatched a knife from his kit of dissecting instruments and drew the razor-sharp blade across her throat. She then threw herself upon the prostrate doctor, her blood drenching his body.

My senses reeling, I staggered forward, tripped over my coffin and fell swooning to the ground.

* * * * *

None believe my story. Neither will you. I have told it to them all, but they will not believe it.

I am in a hospital, where they tell me I have been for several days. It is a prison hospital, where guards in uniform patrol the corridors, lest even the sick try to escape.

They ask me if I cannot remember that I came home that night from the club in a blind frenzy of drink and found my wife and Dr. Langley together. They tell me that I choked him with such ferocity and strength that my fingers broke into the flesh of his neck. They tell me that my wife, screaming with terror, tried to escape, and that, just as the people in the adjoining apartment burst into the room, I seized a razor from the bureau and slashed her throat from ear to ear, and threw her body, with the blood streaming from the wound, across that of the doctor.

Are they going to hang me for this double crime that I did not commit?

They will not believe my story. Yet every detail of it is as clear to me as the stars that shine in the heavens.

_Read of the Frightful Thing That Came from_

_The_ Extraordinary Experiment _of_ Dr. Calgroni

_By_ Joseph Faus and James Bennett Wooding

There is much concerning the queer Dr. Calgroni that I can not give to the world.

It should be remembered that I had never been inside his house until after I beheld him frantically emerge from its big front door, that rainy night, his wizened face as white as death, and, scantily-clad, rush headlong for the depot.

That he was a surgeon of extraordinary ability I readily acknowledge. But Belleville was the last place where one would expect to find a man of such surgical skill, and, most undoubtedly, the last place one would choose for the scene of the startling events brought about as a result of the doctor’s purchase of the ape “Horace” from Barber’s World-famous 3-Ring Show.

Had the doctor merely put up at the hotel I might have believed him, like myself, merely summering at Belleville. For it was a restful hamlet, situated in a mountainous valley, something like a day’s run from New York. But his renting of the Thornsdale place aroused latent suspicions in my mind, probably instilled there by that strange article I had read in _The Surgical Monthly_.

Large enough for a hotel or boarding-house, but out-of-the-way located--also because of the enormous rent demanded by its heirs--the Thornsdale place had stood vacant since the last of the Thornsdale line had died ten years before. Its doors had been closed and padlocked, and its windows barricaded.

It had been the finest residence in the old town in its day, but was now regarded as a sort of historic oddity. On the whole, it afforded a formidable appearance, crouching behind its great elms, looming huge and weather-beaten, with its board-shuttered and frowning windows. But just the sort of place the eccentric Dr. Calgroni could work in, unmolested.

I saw the peculiar doctor one morning as I was leaving the small post office. It was just after train time, and many of the villagers were loitering about the place, among them a young man named Jason Murdock.

Murdock was of that type one always hears of in a small community--the village “devil.” He came of a good family, and had plenty of money and all that: but had succeeded, despite rich heritage-blood, in igniting more fire and brimstone than all five of the village preachers had in their imagination conceived. He was coarsely good-looking, and big and husky.

Aristocratic hoodlum though he was, all rather secretly admired the fellow, probably because he injected “pep” into the lazy old town.

I beheld Jason Murdock pointing to a shriveled-up figure of a little man, stooped of shoulder.

“There he goes--that Dr. Can-groanee, who’s movin’ into the Thornsdale place. I wonder if there’s any good liquor in his cellar? That old Thornsdale dump has a good wine cellar.”

Dr. Calgroni paid not the slightest attention to Jason’s insolent babble, but walked hurriedly along, his clean-shaven, dried-up countenance turning neither to the right nor left.

“Who is that man?” I asked the postmaster, who had now come to the door for air.

“I dunno, excepting his mail is addressed Dr.--I’ll have to spell it--C-A-L-G-R-O-N-I--and it is mostly foreign, out of Vienna, forwarded here from New York.”

“Sort of a man of mystery, eh?” I hazarded.

“I should say he’s sort of a fool for rentin’ that old Thornsdale rat-trap, for God-knows-what, that’s stood vacant these ten years.”

I nodded and left in the direction taken by the doctor.

Here was an element of mystery; for I alone, of all the villagers, knew that this eminent surgeon’s presence in Belleville boded ill.

* * * * *

I soon caught sight of the doctor. For a man of his age and physique, his gait was exceedingly fast--as though propelled by a nervous dynamo.

Stretching my legs, I kept a safe distance between him and myself, until he swung open the tall wooden gate and quickly vanished through the wilderness of tall bushes and low trees into the Thornsdale house. I halted safe from observation and lighted my pipe.

Leaning against a tree there, I ran over in my mind the odd significance of that remarkable article I had recently read in the staid and ever-authentic _Surgical Monthly_.

This Dr. Calgroni, it appeared, had stated to the interviewer that he was here from Austria on a vacation--and to feel out the opinions of American surgeons anent his new theory. One _Herr_ von Meine, a noted surgeon of Vienna, he added with some asperity, had scoffed at the absurdity and unorthodox idea of the unprecedented theory advanced by him, and had declared that his, Calgroni’s, operation was extremely impossible, not to say foolish--that it would never be a success.

Dr. Calgroni claimed that he could prolong a human life indefinitely by the insertion of a live thigh gland from a young quadrumanous mammal, such as the _Pithecoid_.

Much discussion and argument had been provoked throughout the entire medical world by the famous doctor’s theory, and consensus was that he was an impracticable theorist gone mad.

And now here was Dr. Calgroni, living in the quiet little town of Belleville, where none was aware of his sensational hypothesis, renting this immense old ramshackle place, and his remarkable intent known to no one but himself.

I had taken a seat on a tree stump, in front of the gate, which had a ring stapled to it, used in former days as a hitching-post. Time hung heavily upon me in Belleville, but this new element of mystery promised some possible interest and excitement.

Having sat there until my pipe was empty and cold, I was aroused by the noise of the gate opening behind me, followed by the _tap-tap_ of a hammer. I turned.

There stood the doctor in his shirt sleeves, tacking a sign to the gate post. Crudely painted in black on white cardboard I read:

_POSITIVELY NO ADMITTANCE!_

_Anyone entering here does so at his own risk._

_T. Calgroni._

Without even casting a glance my way, the doctor closed the gate behind him and seemed about to depart up the weed-grown gravel walk, when, glancing down the dusky street, he checked himself.

My gaze followed the direction of his eyes. A wagon was approaching. It drew up at the stump and halted. Loaded with big boxes, the mules were sweating after the pull. Their surly-faced driver stopped twenty feet away and turned to the doctor:

“I know I’m late,” I overheard him grumble, “but I handled the boxes carefully as you said. Shall I drive in?”

“You’d better,” returned Calgroni in crisp English, still not noticing me. “And remember, if there’s a thing broken not a cent do you get.” And he wheeled up the path.

“Dam’ him!” swore the teamster, turning to me. “Did you ever see such an old crab?”

“Glass inside the boxes?” I suggested.

The fellow looked at me suspiciously then his lips contracted like a vise and he turned to his mules. I watched him drive through the wagon gate, and on up through the moss-covered trees to the house.

_II._

The next morning I arose early, with the intention of strolling past the old Thornsdale place. I found Main Street lifeless, except for two men busily engaged in posting up the glaring announcement of the coming of:

“BARBER’S WORLD-FAMOUS 3-RING SHOW”

Pausing, I watched them swab the long multi-hued strips of paper with their paste brush and sling them upon the billboard. A small crowd of big-eyed youngsters and loafers gradually congregated about the busy circus advance men.

The most glaring and conspicuous poster represented two gorillas peering angrily out from behind the bars of their cage. Beneath it was lithographed in huge, red letters:

“MIMMIE AND HORACE ONLY WILD GORILLAS IN CAPTIVITY!”

I turned to leave--and, momentarily startled, faced what seemed to be one of the gorillas at large! Only it wore clothes. Gazing at the poster with a look of blank curiosity, was a man, short in stature, immense of shoulder and deep of chest, his hair thatching his forehead almost to his bushy eyebrows. He was hideous to look upon. I recognized him, though, after an instant, as the village half-wit, known as “Simple Will.”

I had seen him before, a poor, weak-minded creature, wandering helplessly about the village, pitied, but spurned except when someone needed the help of powerful hands and a strong back.

Drooling and muttering, Will followed the circus men as they started off.

I idly strolled down the first street; then, reaching the outskirts of town, I found myself in the rear of the Thornsdale place. To my surprise, I beheld another warning notice similar to the one that Dr. Calgroni had tacked to his front gate last evening. Not only in one but many places, on trees and the high fence, I saw the warning signs of “No Trespassing.” The doctor himself was nowhere to be seen.

A week slipped by and nothing happened further than gossip concerning the queer doctor. Occasionally Dr. Calgroni, in person, purchased supplies and called for his mail. Although I contrived to be near him whenever possible, he seldom uttered more than half a dozen words--and never to me. Once, though, I thought I caught him peering surreptitiously at me in a queer manner.

Obviously, the doctor was his own servant, housekeeper and cook. No one took the risk of entering his place--not even the daring Jason Murdock.

Several days before the circus arrived, I noticed what I considered a peculiarly significant happening--Dr. Calgroni walking toward his abode, with Simple Will tagging, doglike, a few paces behind.

At discreet distance, I followed them. Arriving at the Thornsdale place, I was surprised to see the doctor close the gate behind him, leaving Will standing outside. The half-wit stood there until Dr. Calgroni disappeared.

The day before the show came, I saw the doctor clapping Will on the shoulder and talking to him.

That night such a terrible conclusion shaped itself in my mind as to the meaning of the singular boxes, the hostile notices, Will’s attitude toward the doctor, and the latter’s interest in him, that it kept me wide awake.

In ill humor at myself, I rose at the first appearance of the sun. Remembering the circus, I strolled over to the tracks to watch it unload.

Some villagers had gathered about the few wretched travel-scarred cars that made up the second-rate circus train, and particularly in front of the car containing the cage of Mimmie and Horace.

Doctor Calgroni was there, and, at his heels, Simple Will. The doctor was talking very earnestly to the trainer.

“You say Mr. Barber has offered to sell either of these animals,” the doctor was saying, as I drew up on the outer fringe of the curious crowd.

“Yes sir. He will sell one because they fight continually. They have to be carefully watched, or they might kill each other. You don’t know what ferocious beasts gorillas are--”

The doctor smiled.

“I would like to talk to Mr. Barber,” he interposed.

The gorilla trainer hesitated, then, pulling shut the sliding doors of the animal car:

“Sure; just follow me,” he said.

The doctor, at the man’s side, walked to a coach ahead, the combination ticket-and-executive office of the Barber Shows. For an instant, Simple Will seemed to hesitate, but he didn’t trail Dr. Calgroni--the unseen things inside of the gigantic cage nearby seemed to hold his hypnotic attention. Several big drops of rain splashed upon the cinder-strewn ground. The heavens hung black and dismal; the sun had completely vanished.

I watched Simple Will. He was ill-at-ease, hovering uneasily about the gorillas’ car. The other people nearby paid no attention to the half-wit. Presently the trainer and Dr. Calgroni returned, accompanied by another man, who was counting a roll of bills.