"He begged me not to kill him and — then he told me.
"He told me that he was a physician; he said that he had always taken the position that a normal, sound man could literally be scared to death. He told me that other physicians differed with him, arguing that so-called death from fright could occur only when there was a weak heart.
"The desire to prove his contention became an obsession with Dr. Waugh and he decided to prove it. He rented this farm, and set up his play railroad and began to search for a subject. He was hunting, in fact, when he stopped me from jumping from 'Suicide Bridge.' He justified himself on the ground that I would have ended my life anyhow and that I had lost nothing.
"When I realized that Dr. Waugh was not, after all, an irresponsible maniac, my anger returned. That a physician whose life should be dedicated to the relief of human suffering should subject any man — regardless of how lightly he valued life — to the inhuman mental torture that I had endured, all for the sake of proving a silly, unimportant medical theory!
"I had pinned Dr. Waugh to the ground. There was a rope in his tool box. Qifickly I passed one end of it about his neck and fastened it to a tree; the other end I tied to his feet and to the rear axle of the automobile."
"Great God!" cried John Lake. "You were going to—"
Justin Graham did not answer.
"I got into the car," he continued; "I put my foot on the electric starter button; the engine roared and then — I shut off the engine, but—"
Doctor Lake jumped to his feet.
"But Dr. Waugh was dead!" he finished the sentence. "You killed him; you murdered him — in cold blood! You — you scared him to death!"
Graham met the accusing gaze calmly.
"I think that most doctors will contend that a man — a man with a normal heart — cannot be frightened to death," he said quietly.
Doctor Lake eyed the prisoner intently.
"You're a medic yourself," he accused.
"Do you think so?" smiled Graham.
"Do I think so?" thundered John Lake. "I know so! Naturally I have read between the lines of your story — just as you intended that I should. Oh, you're a clever fiend! You gave Dr. Waugh the same chance that he gave you; you tested his heart as he lay there on the ground — probably you used his own stethoscope. You got into the automobile, started the motor with the deliberate intention of — of letting Dr. Waugh prove his own theory. It was deliberate murder!"
"I hardly think you can prove that in — in court," suggested Graham.
"I know damned well I can't," shouted Lake. "You, as cold-blooded a slayer as a man who ever fired a pistol, are safe from the law. So far as the law is concerned, the Waugh case is closed — he died from heart failure. Here's your stickpin. Get out!
The Chief of Detectives was nodding his agreement with Lake's position; the Chief was eyeing Graham curiously.
"Hum!" he rumbled. "Mr. Graham has your — er — hair been white long?"
"Since — since that night," Justin Graham replied.
The door closed.
"Do you know, Lake, I don't blame Graham — much," muttered the Chief.
John Lake stared out of the window.
"Well, Chief," he said, "perhaps I don't either — much."
Daughter of the Pigeon
By Harry C. Hervey, Jr
I
That last night in Marquesan waters, as Cleaves and I sat on the fore-deck of the anchored Jezbel, listening to the talk of Leaping Fire, the Polynesian midshipman, the Bay of Traitors was lit with an eerie glow. Along Taha-uka, from the rockbound shore where the surf hurled its futile rage upon a Bastile of dun-colored stone, to the somnolent lights of Hivaoa dreaming beneath the black thunders of Temetiu, legions of phosphorus battled in green strife.
…"Yonder is the isle of Taoha, Menikes," Leaping Fire was saying, pointing with his tattooed arm toward what seemed a mass of stone rising upon the moonlit night, his speech punctuated by the creaking of the boom as it swung with the slide and heave of the lazy rollers. "In the days before the Christian God came, when Po, the Power of Darkness, ruled the islands, the sea-robbers of Tahati used to hide their treasures there — somewhere near the High Place and the Vale Where Dead Men Walk."
"The Vale Where Dead Men Walk," I echoed. "What is that?"
"A Valley below the High Place. From the sacrificial Altar of Po the old chiefs used to hurl their victims into the gorge — in the days when the island was called Bloody Taoha…"
Once a Polynesian always a Polynesian, and in the South Sea Islander there still lurks a desire for the taste of human flesh. "And I imagined that as he spoke Leaping Fire could again hear, not without joy, the savage throbbing of rawhide drums in the dank, purple valleys of Bloody Taoha.
"Is the island still inhabited?" This from Cleaves.
"Yes. Years ago there were more than a thousand warriors on Taoha, but with the white man came plagues and wars — until now there are less than fifty. Mahuma is the chief, but he is. slowly drinking himself to death with Kava. Ah, Menikes, the history of Taoha, the dying island is written in blood — and the future… But who knows the future?"
"I'd like to visit the island," observed Cleaves.
"Do not go to Taoha," warned Leaping Fire, "It is accursed. All die upon Taoha. And some say—" He paused.
"What?" I urged.
"Some say that the spirits of the Tahatian pirates return from under the earth to guard their treasures…"
Cleaves and I gazed seaward to the isle of tragic history, a bulk of stone that bared its nakedness to the low-hung tropic stars.
"Lay you two to one I can beat you swimming to the island, Rundel," spoke up Cleaves.
I smiled. "Take you up."
"It is two miles away!" protested Leaping Fire. "And in the bay are mako and feke — fierce, man-devouring sharks and devil-fish!"
But we would not listen to him; the tales of hidden loot and crimson deeds had stirred our blood.
"I'm for the swim, sharks or no sharks." said I, without bravado, for I did not realize the danger. "And as long as I've been in the tropics I have run across only one devil-fish. I'll tell you, Cleaves, we'll see who can reach the High Place first, you taking one end of the island and I the other, equalizing the distance. What do you say?"
"You do not know the way to—" began the Polynesian.
"Perhaps," interposed Cleaves. "But you will tell us. Moreover, you and a couple of the crew will follow in a whale-boat and wait on the beach to bring us back. The race will be to the High Place and back to the whale-boat, the first one reaching the High Place piling several stones on the altar to let the other know he's been there."
That was how it began. Down in the tropics men do queer things. The savage song of the surf on the coral reefs is a tune of lawlessness.
Twenty minutes later Cleaves and I, stripped but for bathing trunks, were descending the gangway-stairs while Leaping Fire and others of the crew lowered a whale-boat.
"I warned you, Menikes," Leaping Fire called to us sadly from the deck.
And I laughed — for his tales of piracy and the feel of the amorous wind on my body had aroused the sleeping boy within me.
"Ready?" asked Cleaves — and I nodded.
Side by side we plunged into the green bay. The water was mildly cool — old wine to the muscles. When I returned to the surface I struck out toward the island, which seemed a mass of dark-ridden rocks beneath the fiery Southern Cross. Several yards away, the phosphorus leaping about him, was Cleaves, headed for the northern end of Taoha.