by Osie Turner
"Perhaps I will," he muttered. "Perhaps I will." He picked up the book and began to turn the leaves. "I know I ought to go home," he added a trifle wistfully.
"Have you forgiven Hubbard yet?" I asked, turning toward the door. "Or have you found out that he wasn't responsible for that Christmas present?"
But Farrington did not answer me. Evidently he had once more become engrossed in Martin's new book. Oblivious to everything about him, he sat with a strange, rigid attention, slowly turning the leaves. And, as I glanced back at him over my shoulder, it seemed to me that his face suddenly underwent a change—that the whites of his eyes were suffused with blood; that the veins in his forehead became black and bulging; that his moist, red lips puffed out at each long breath. And I left him thus, alone with "The Confessions of Constantine."
XII
Martin's new book was published the following week. If his first volume had caused a breeze of public comment, his second created a whirlwind. Those who were unfortunate enough to have read "The Confessions of Constantine" before it was suppressed by the government, can still remember the terrifying sensations with which it inspired them. Sir Vivian Gerard aptly phrased it in a newspaper article which ended in these words:
"I trembled when I read 'Many Murders' as though I were actually witnessing the terrible crimes which it described; but when I perused 'The Confessions of Constantine,' my hand was steady and my brain on fire with the blood lust of the murderer as he strikes the fatal blow. I felt no repulsion at the savagery of it; only the great, unholy joy of brute rage. I cannot criticize this book; I can only wonder at it."
It was shortly after "The Confessions of Constantine" made its appearance that the still well-remembered crime wave swept New York from end to end. The police fought valiantly to hold it in check, but failed. In vain they made countless arrests; new murderers sprang up on all sides. It was as though it were some kind of contagious disease—a "murder microbe" as some learned fool maintained.
One afternoon, while this dangerous plague was at its height, Wilbur Huntington dropped into the studio on his way to the Cap and Gown Club. I was delighted to see him and stopped work for a time to chat.
"Well, what do you think of this murder scourge we're having?" I asked, laying my brush aside.
"It's rather interesting, don't you think?" he said, half closing his eyes. "I see you have a new bolt on your door, Charley."
"Yes," I answered, flushing slightly. "One has to nowadays. Bolts and locks are the fashion. They tell me the chief of police has himself guarded like a feudal baron."
"Strange that everyone should be murdering someone," Huntington continued, his nose twitching slightly. "But seriously, Charley, the baffling fact about these crimes is the manner in which they are perpetrated."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean just that. A man goes out and murders someone without any real reason and without any skill. Murder is committed everywhere these days; and no one seems to care whether he's found out or not. Murder used to be shrouded in mystery; now it walks brazenly in the sunlight, inviting the attention of any passerby. Do you know how many murderers gave themselves up last week?"
"No. How many?"
"Forty-nine. Forty-nine out of fifty! And they all seem proud of it! That's strange, isn't it, Charley?"
"Yes, it is," I answered. "It would seem that Professor Knolls might be right about the murder microbe."
Huntington threw back his head and laughed. "No, I think not, Charley," he said. "But what does your friend Martin say about all this?"
"How should I know? I haven't seen him now in nearly two years."
"You haven't, eh?" Huntington settled back on the lounge and closed his eyes. "What's the matter with that Farrington fellow?" he asked after a pause. "Nothing, that I know of. Why?" "I just met him as I was coming up the street. He seemed to be in a devilish hurry—his face red as a beet, his eyes staring. He looked as if he had gone dotty. I shouted to him, but he didn't seem to hear me—just went scooting by on those long legs of his. He left me staring, I can tell you."
"Rupert hasn't been himself lately," I hastened to explain. "You've got to make allowances for the poor fellow. All his life he's tried to become a famous poet and he's no further advanced now than he was ten years ago."
"That's a shame!" Huntington muttered. "I never knew he had worked so hard. Isn't there anything we could do for him—bribe some publisher to bring out his poems, for instance?"
"I'm afraid that wouldn't do any good," I answered. "You see, he really hasn't got the stuff. It would be a mistaken kindness. What he ought to do, would be to—"
"Who's that laughing in the hallway?" Huntington broke in suddenly. "That's a devil of a racket! Have you got a crazy man about the premises?"
"I don't hear anything. You must be mistaken."
But Huntington cautioned me to silence with a lifted finger. "Listen!" he whispered.
Then I heard it. And what a laugh it was, starting deep down in the throat in a kind of horrid chuckling and rising higher and higher till it ended in a dismal howl! Nearer and nearer it came, rising and falling, battering on the eardrums with a savage insistency. Finally the studio door flew open and we caught a glimpse of him who laughed.
Rupert Farrington stood on the threshold, swaying back and forth as though shaken by that inhuman merriment which tore his lips apart. His face was a deep crimson; beneath the flushed skin, all the muscles were aquiver like a handful of worms. But the man's eyes were what caused me to utter an ejaculation of dismay. The pupils seemed mere pinpoints while the areas of white had grown enormous and were threaded with vivid veins. And as one looked at those eyes, a strange transformation seemed to take place; they were no longer eyes hut spiders—spiders crouching in a crimson web.
I ran forward and took his arm. "What's the matter, Rupert?" I cried. "What's wrong with you?"
But he continued to shake with laughter—laughter which made every muscle in his body writhe as though in pain.
"What's the matter?" I repeated. "Are you mad? Stop that laughing or I'll shake it out of you! Haven't you any self-control?"
But still he laughed, painfully, immoderately, with his head thrown back and his eyes staring vacantly at the ceiling. Apparently he did not hear me.
Now Wilbur Huntington took a hand in the game. Stepping forward with unwonted briskness, he tapped Rupert on the chest with a commanding fore-finger. "Burgess Martin wants to know what you think of 'The Confessions of Constantine,'" he said in a loud, authoritative voice. "Do you hear what I am saying, Rupert Farrington? Burgess Martin wants to know what you think of 'The Confessions of Constantine.'"
Then a strange thing happened. Rupert's discordant laughter died away. It was as though it had been bottled up in his throat. His bloodshot eyes left the ceiling and became fixed on Huntington's face.
"Tell him I like it," he said thickly. "Tell him it's true—damn true! A dull knife makes no difference— even a paper cutter will serve. To have one beneath you whom you hate; and then to strike—to strike not once or twice but a hundred times!"
Farrington raised one of his long arms above his head and I saw with horror that his coat sleeve was stained with blood.
"Tell Burgess Martin that I have read 'The Confessions of Constantine' over and over again," he continued in a singsong voice. "Tell him that I have often crept into its pages. It is such a small book; yet I feel that I can find my way into it at will. That door is never locked. It opens readily. Sometimes before one knows it, one is inside. This afternoon I took a walk with 'The Confessions of Constantine.' We walked till I met a man who should not live—an editor who should not live!"
"He means Hubbard of the 'Firefly,'" I whispered to Huntington. "Do you think he has—"
But Farrington broke in upon me. He had lifted his voice to a shout. "The book opened its leaves to me, you understand. I entered a small room. He was sitting with his back turned toward me. There was an inviting ripple of flesh above his co
llar. Like a luscious bun it bulged out anxiously to receive the knife's sharp kiss. I hated this man and I approached. But did I hate him after all? Ah, no. Surely I loved him with a great if transitory love! Does the butcher hate the sheep that is bleating in its death agonies? Does the tiger hate the fawn which has fallen to its lot? Surely it is not hatred which makes us kill, but love—love for—"
Farrington broke off suddenly. The color receded from his face; his eyes seemed to be covered with a thin coating of glass. He swayed forward.
"Catch him!" Huntington cried sharply. "He's going off into a swoon!"
Hardly had he spoken before Rupert fell into my arms. He was a light man, and I had no difficulty in supporting him to the lounge where he promptly collapsed into a senseless heap of humanity. Then I turned to Wilbur with a dawning suspicion of the truth.
"What did he mean?" I cried. "Do you think he has killed anyone?"
Huntington nodded grimly. "I shouldn't wonder," he muttered. "Who was the man in the room? Has he quarreled with an editor?"
"Yes and no. He thinks he has a grudge against Hubbard of the 'Firefly.' But it was nothing serious —nothing to make a man commit murder."
Wilbur shook his head. "That doesn't seem to matter nowadays. Murders are committed for the merest trifles. Yesterday an old chap killed his housekeeper because she forgot to put sugar on his grapefruit. Did you know that Farrington was quoting from 'The Confessions of Constantine' just before he caved in?"
"No, I didn't. I haven't read the book."
"Well, he was. I remember the passage distinctly. It's the most unpleasant thing in the whole damn book. It's a description of a murder which is supposed to be written by the murderer himself; and while you're reading it, you feel that you're sticking the knife in with your own hand!"
"Do you think Rupert's insane?"
"I don't know. It seems to me more like a fit—or a hypnotic trance. The man was not responsible for what he did, that's certain. But I'm going to look into this new book of Martin's—by Heaven, I am!"
For some time longer we talked in lowered voices with an occasional side-long look at Farrington who had apparently sunk into a deep sleep. The young poet lay on his back—one of his hands dangled nearly to the floor; the other rested on his breast, protruding from the bloodstained coat-sleeve like a white flower from an earthen jug. His small, rather girlish face had regained its habitual calm; now a smile hovered about the lips.
"I shouldn't wonder if he awoke in his right mind," Huntington whispered.
At that moment, Rupert opened his large, melancholy eyes. "Where am I?" he murmured.
"It's all right," I hastened to assure him. "You're in my studio. You've been sick, Rupert."
"Sick?" he repeated. "I had a terrible dream. I thought I had killed Hubbard and that I had actually enjoyed doing it." He smiled weakly.
"Don't talk too much," Huntington warned him. "You're still very weak. You'll need your strength; later. Why, what's the matter?"
"My God!" Farrington muttered. His wandering eyes had rested for an instant on his coat-sleeve. Staring at the bloodstained cuff, he repeated dully: "My God! It's true then—all true!"
"Oh, probably you've just cut your wrist a bit," Huntington said kindly.
"No, it all comes back to me now," Farrington cried, moistening his lips with his tongue. "I had been reading 'The Confessions of Constantine' and somehow I had lost my identity in those pages. I didn't murder Hubbard—it was someone else who had climbed into my body while my soul was asleep; some red, roaring beast from 'The Confessions of Constantine'! I know that you fellows can't understand what I mean! You think I'm trying to get out of this, but I'm not! I'm willing to pay the price!"
"Hush," said Huntington, "I hear footsteps in the corridor."
Suddenly the sound of heavy knocking echoed through the room. Someone was pounding on the studio door.
"Come in," I called.
Now the door swung slowly open and two policemen stepped into the room. Glancing about curiously, their eyes finally rested on Farrington.
"Well?" said Huntington sharply.
"Is Mr. Farrington here?" the taller policeman asked.
Rupert rose and confronted them. "That's my name," he said quietly. "What do you want of me?"
"You're wanted for the murder of J. E. Hubbard, editor of the 'Firefly,'" the officer answered, stepping up to Rupert and slipping a pair of handcuffs on his slender wrists. "You'd better go quietly, sir."
"Very well," Farrington answered. And then turning to me with a brave smile which wrung my heart, he said in a voice that trembled only very slightly: "Smithers, you have won our last bet. I am sorry— damn sorry!—that I ever read any of Martin's work!"
XIII
Weeks passed and still the crime wave swept the city. One had but to glance at the papers to see how widely this homicidal plague had spread. Other towns soon became infected. Boston, Philadelphia, and Chicago suffered even more severely than New York; and, strange to say, the police annals proved that these modern murderers sprang, not from the illiterate, uneducated classes as one might fancy, but from the reading public and more especially from the highest intellectual types.
It was during those ill-fated days that college professors, school-teachers, and literary critics began to run amuck. There was poor old Professor Brent of the university, for instance—Professor Brent who had written so many sugar-coated essays on the brotherhood of man. Who would have thought it possible that this kindly old fellow—this senile optimist whose work had always been well sweetened before it went to press—should attempt to do away with a whole class of college students one bright spring morning? And yet one had to believe it. There it was in the papers, with a host of other incomprehensible crimes as well.
But perhaps the Southern States suffered most of all. Of late years lynching parties had been rather few and far between; now they happened again with almost machinelike regularity. Scarcely a day passed in any of those towns on the other side of the Mason and Dixon's line when some negro did not dance out his life at the end of a rope. And the leaders of these lynching parties—the men who adjusted the noose about the cowering wretch's neck or lit the fagots which had been piled up against his knees—were invariably men of keen sensibilities and higher education—men who would have shrunk from such a task a few months before.
As this crimson wave passed over the country, leaving horror and desolation in its track, the creative thinkers, who had as yet remained untouched, began to ask themselves a multitude of questions: What would be the final outcome of this catastrophe? If the higher type of intelligence fell victim to this homicidal mania, what could one expect from the illiterate, unimaginative masses who were born to follow like so many sheep? For the first time in human history, education had joined hands with crime. What would be the final denouement? Possibly we were now facing the end of the world—a bloody end of order, a return to those primeval days when every man's hand was raised against the other.
It was during these days of dark despair, days when our modern civilization seemed tottering in the balance, that a young man gained access to the chief of the New York police force and pointed out a simple cure which had been overlooked by all the criminal experts.
Wilbur Huntington, for it was he, had some difficulty at first in securing an interview. The chief of police, on account of the many attempts made on his life, was taking no more chances with strangers. If Huntington's family had not been so prominent in the city, so influential in political circles, it is doubtful if Wilbur would have been able to gain access to that official's office. As it was, the meeting was arranged and the following conversation took place:
"Well, what can I do for you?" asked the chief, fixing a vigilant eye on his visitor.
"I came to see you about this crime wave."
"Well?"
"You want these murders stopped, don't you?" Wilbur asked simply.
For the first time in many days the chief burst out into a l
augh. "Of course!" he answered.
"Well, I know how to stop them—or at least, the great majority."
Now the chief regarded his visitor with a look of fatherly pity, a look which seemed to say: "Too bad, too bad! Another madman to deal with. I'd better humor him a bit."
"It will be all right, Mr. Huntington," he said aloud. "Don't you worry your poor head about it. Just you go home and—"
But at this point, Wilbur interrupted him by stepping forward and placing a book bound in red morocco on his desk. "Here's the root of the whole matter," he declared.
"My dear young man," the chief said wearily, "I can't be bothered by this sort of thing. The State pays competent men to—"