At the door of his room he halted. He had never killed a human being before and the all but vanquished normal half of his split personality made one last struggle. It screamed to the soul of the schizophrenic not to pass through this door, for once it did, it was damned forever.
The face of the man twisted from the struggle within him; a sob was torn from his racked body… and then he opened the door. The victory, temporarily at least, was won by the destructive personality that had been nurtured to full strength by the three-day downpour from the heavens.
The man with the paper-knife walked to another door in the corridor, opened it and stepped into the room.
A man lay on the bed, his form a darker shadow in the semi-dark of the room. The schizophrenic moved to the side of the bed. He stood there looking down at the sleeping man.
The intensity of his thoughts may have transmitted themselves to the subconscious brain of the sleeper, for suddenly he stirred and his eyes opened.
“Hello,” he said, startled. “What is it?”
“I am going to kill you,” said the standing man and raised his right hand over his head.
The man in the bed, shocked awake, saw death in the killer’s eyes. He gasped:
“Don’t! Don’t! Please, I’ll—”
The slender paper-knife came down with terrific force. It struck the throat of the man on the bed, went clear through as if it had been soft butter.
The man on the bed choked horribly and his body thrashed about for a moment. It made a wrestler’s arch and the killer stepped back in alarm. Then the body collapsed.
The killer came forward again. In the semi-gloom he groped for the knife handle, found it and pulled it out of the dead man’s throat. The blood, rushing out, made a soft, gurgling sound.
Methodically, the murderer took hold of the edge of the bedspread. He wrapped the knife in it and wiped it thoroughly, removing from it blood as well as finger prints. Then he let the knife drop to the floor and walked out of the room. He went to his own room, closed the door and entered the bathroom.
He switched on the light above the wash-bowl and washed his hands. He dried them on a towel, hung the towel up neatly on the rack, then looked at his reflection in the mirror over the medicine chest.
The face that looked back at him did not look like the face of a killer.
Rain splashed against the bathroom window. Slowly the monotonous wet sound of it penetrated the consciousness of the killer. A frown creased his forehead. He spoke to the face in the mirror; a half whisper with a trace of returning doubt in it:
“You are a murderer.”
Schizophrenics are unhappy persons. Their dual personalities are constantly at war with one another. In moments of depression, stress or mental anguish, the element without inhibitions gains the ascendancy and the schizophrenic will do things for which he will later suffer untold remorse. But having won once, the uninhibited element wins again… and again… and in time will rule.
Remorse was already wrapping its cold fingers around the heart of the man in the bathroom. The merciless rain beat against the window.
The rain was the real murderer.
Oliver Quade, the Human Encyclopedia, had debated with himself about taking the detour and after he’d gone a mile on it he wished he’d decided against it. The only thing that kept him on the narrow, winding road now was that the road shoulders were too soft and muddy for him to risk turning around.
The road was graveled, but wherever there was a depression in the gravel there was a muddy pond. The ditches on each side of the road were miniature torrents. And the rain still came down in sheets. Jupiter Pluvius had a real mad against the world.
It was six o’clock in the afternoon and dark as the inside of an inkwell. Quade cursed dispassionately and wished he’d been content to remain in drowsy idleness back there in the city. He’d come too far, though, to turn back; it would be easier to continue to the next town. There had to be one soon, despite the detour.
The headlights of his little coupe picked out a car on the road ahead. It was a touring car with side curtains, a large machine but not too comfortable for such sodden weather. Its headlights were silhouetting a framework ahead of it. It wasn’t until Quade had come up within fifty feet that he could make out that the framework was a bridge.
Quade braked his car to a stop a few yards behind the touring car and then he saw something else; water was rushing over the flooring of the bridge.
He rolled down the window at his left elbow, stuck his head out into the downpour and yelled, “Bridge go out?”
A man wearing a glistening raincoat sloshed up to Quade’s car. “Naw,” he said. “She ain’t out yet, but she’s creaking and won’t stand much more.”
“You going to cross?” Quade asked.
The man shrugged. “We gotta make it across, but we’re scared to take a chance. The current’s pretty swift. We’d be carried right away.”
Another man in a dripping slicker came up. “Mister, your car’s a lot lighter than ours,” he said. “You might make it.” Quade pursed his lips. “Well, the road’s too narrow to turn around and go back so I guess I’ll have to chance it.”
The man who had come up first, said, “Mind if we ride across with you? We got to get over there.”
“Hop in,” Quade invited. “Three hundred and fifty pounds more won’t make enough difference.”
He opened the door on the far side of him and the two men trudged around. They squeezed into the front seat, the closest man’s slicker wetting Quade clear through to the skin.
He gunned the motor and the wheels swished on the soaked gravel. For a moment Quade thought his car was already stuck, but then the little motor jerked the car out of the rut and it went back. Quade stopped it fifty yards from the bridge.
“Hang on,” he said, grimly. “I’m going to take it full speed.”
“In high?” asked the man beside him.
“No, the water’s too deep for that and if I should kill the motor I doubt whether I could start it again. I’ll take it in low, but I’m not stopping for anything.”
“I thought I heard the bridge creak,” said the second man. “Think we ought to try it?”
Quade thought that he saw the bridge skeleton move. The car was insured and could be replaced. His life wasn’t insured and couldn’t be replaced. He asked:
“How important is it for you to get across?”
The man beside Quade sighed. “Very important. I’m Dave Starkey, the sheriff of this county. And this is Lou Higginbotham, my deputy. A murder has been committed over on that island. That’s why we want to get over.”
“Then,” said Quade, “Hold tight… and pray!”
He shifted into low, kept his foot on the clutch and raced the motor. Then suddenly he let out the clutch. The car leaped forward and Quade pushed the gas throttle to the floorboards. He gripped the steering wheel firmly and missed the lawmen’s car by inches. The coupe hit the water covering the bridge floor and splashed it mightily.
Quade felt the wheels grip the bridge planking. Water splashed up through the floor-boards, soaked his trousers to his knees, but he kept his foot down on the throttle.
Half-way across! The bridge creaked ominously and for a giddy moment Quade thought it was going out. He heard the sheriff beside him gasp.
Three-quarters across and the bridge swayed so that Quade had to fight the wheel. Higginbotham, the deputy, whimpered.
And then, miraculously, the coupe leaped clear of the water and climbed the steep, graveled road on the other side. Quade continued to the crest of the ridge before he lifted his foot from the throttle. He stopped the car then, and a tremor ran through him. He knew that there was a fine film of perspiration on his forehead.