"In the body of Mrs. Winters, Meta left this house. She came here in the body of Dolly, Ha! Ha! It was a puzzle for the fools of policemen, trying to figure out how the body of the maid got into the coffin of the mistress. I love puzzles. I worked it all out to attract your attention — as I knew it eventually would — my dear Mohammed Gunga. You were getting too close to my tracks — you and your hellish gang! With you gone, none will be left on this side of the water who can hope to match their strength with mine.
"My only regret is that I didn't blast that damned salesman, Johnson, who blocked our game when we stole the brooch. I was the chauffeur, as you have already guessed. I grew tenderhearted — fool that I am. When he seized Meta, he forced her to quit the body she was occupying and enter that of the dead woman we had in the machine, ready for just such an emergency. I'll get him yet, though, damn him!
"I killed Winters, inspector, the same night that I telephoned to you. Ha, it was funny. I left his body hidden in a room I keep downtown for just such purposes. Then I threw my soul across the space and into the body I now occupy in time to answer your telephone call. I knew that you would trace the call and seek to trap me. I wanted to puzzle you. It has been a real pleasure for me to play with you. For I give you credit for having more intelligence than the average detective. I knew that sooner or later, though, you would get beyond your depth and call for aid from Mohammed Gunga.
"Where is Winters' body hidden now? That's my business, fools! It's hidden away where I can use it again if the occasion ever demands — after Meta and I get through using the Winters millions, possibly. Your policeman? O, yes, I killed him — blasted him from the automobile while I was talking to you. I kept my promise, did I not?
"And now, both of you, prepare to die! I, Lessman, the Man Who Will Not Die, will it!"
XIII
Des Moines felt an icy sensation creep over him. Then came a peculiar numbness. He struggled against it. Clammy fingers seemed to clutch his throat! He was choking! He staggered like a drunken man, seeking an avenue of escape. A veil of darkness seemed to weigh upon his eyes. Tighter and tighter grew the bands about him. And, then, screaming like an hysterical woman, he fell to the floor, unconscious.
How long he lay there he never knew. Probably only a few seconds. He awakened suddenly. For an instant he imagined himself dead. He opened his eyes. Over him stood the Master, calm, self-reliant, facing the monster. Silently the two men, only a few yards apart, waged the greatest battle the world will ever know — the battle of wills — a duel between the Powers of Darkness and the forces of Good.
Slowly — slowly — slowly, Lessman seemed to weaken. Great drops of sweat stood out on his forehead. His breath came in asthmatic pants. He struggled to save himself, to concentrate his powerful will for a final effort, but in vain. Opposed to him was a will greater than his own — the united will of the thousands who had devoted their lives to the work of uplifting mankind — the will of the holy men of India.
His legs trembled. His fingers twitched jerkily. Then, as he sank to the floor, he made a final effort to escape. From his body emanated a thin vapor — an aura. It was his soul attempting flight. It spread across the room like a nauseous miasma, smoke-like, cloudy, repellent — hellish!
In response to The Master's will, it drew itself together. Slowly — oh, so slowly — as if fighting to the very last, it drew nearer and nearer to the man to whose mind it acknowledged the mastery.
At last, it was but a tiny, smoky, grey ball of vapor. The Master held forth his hand and it hovered over his palm. He pressed his fingers together. When he opened them a tiny particle of grayish power lay within his hand
Through the house rang the bloodcurdling shriek of a woman — a single, despairing wail of anguish! Then, through the door floated another wraith. For a second it hesitated. Then it mingled with the ashes of its lover in the Master's hand.
Mohammed Gunga blew upon his palm. The powder vanished into nothingness.
He extended his hand to Des Moines and assisted him to his feet.
"That is the end! Only you and I know the truth. Let us depart. The Monster is dead!"
The yellow dog
by Eric Darling
I
The moment for which Hankinson had made such anxious and careful preparation during three weary weeks of watching and waiting had come at last. There, within a yard of him, was the old jeweler whom he meant to stun and to rob; there, in Hankinson's hand, was the sandbag with which he intended to strike him down. And all about the two men, the one unsuspecting, the other quivering with intent, hung the heavy silence of midnight, broken only by the metallic tinkle of the valuables which the old man was slowly transferring from counter to safe.
Hankinson, thief and criminal from his youth upward, had at that time been out of prison for precisely a month. He had no particular desire to return to prison, but, on the other hand, he had no leanings toward the path of rectitude.
Upon emerging from durance he had possessed himself of a small stock of money, which he had safely hidden in view of emergencies; when it was in his pocket he had left his usual haunts in North London and betaken himself to new ones in the purlieus of the Mile End Road. He took a cheap lodging there, and began to look around him in White-chapel and its neighborhood. And in time he saw what he considered to be a good chance.
Lurking about in the busy streets, always with alert eyes, he saw at last a prospect of replenishing the gradually emptying purse. Thereafter he gave all his thought and attention to that prospect. The prospect quickly became a scheme.
There was an old-fashioned, dingy jeweler's shop in a small side street off Houndsditch; it was also a pawn-broking establishment. Three gilded balls overhung a passage entrance at the side. In that passage there was a sort of sentry-box in which the shutters of the front window were kept. A curly-headed, hooked-nose boy put up those shutters every night before going home. He was utterly indifferent to the shutters, that boy, when he had once put them up; but when he had gone away, whistling, Hankinson, under cover of the dusk, took a mighty interest in them. For long years of trained observation had made Hankinson's eyes unusually sharp, and it had not taken him more than one glance to see that in one of those shutters there was a noticeable, an appreciable crack. You could see the light in the shop through it. Therefore, through it you could see into the shop.
Hankinson contrived to see into the shop through that slit a good many times. It was always at night that he made these observations, and he made them with delicacy and with speed. But within a week he learnt a good deal.
Much of what he learnt was obvious in other ways — namely, that the shop was closed on Saturdays all day long; that from Monday to Thursday it was closed at nine o'clock in the evening; that on Friday nights it was kept open until eleven. But his observations through the crack in the shutter informed him that every night after closing hours, whether at nine o'clock or at eleven, Isidore Marcovitch, the old proprietor, a gray-haired, stooping-figured Hebrew, busied himself, alone, unaided, in transferring his most valuable wares from his window and counter to a large safe which stood in the rear of the shop. And, dingy and old-fashioned as the shop was, there were valuables in it which made Hankinson covetous.