Chapter XII

MORE REMARKABLE THINGS FROM THE DIARY.

“They hanged John Duncan today for the murder of the unknown young man. And I, the man who swore to save him from the gallows, could do nothing.

“I am an accomplice—an accessory after the fact. Lessman is a fiend, and if Meta is any better it is only because she lacks his scientific ability. I am beginning to hate them both.

“I have been tricked. I am but a dupe. My brain is steadily growing weaker. When they have sucked me dry they will cast me aside, as they have Collins and the others. I realize this when I am alone, but when I am with Lessman I do his bidding gladly, happily.

“The papers are often filled with accounts of his work among the poorer classes. They say that he gives thousands of dollars away yearly. Little do they suspect that it is money that he has secured through crime—that he interests himself among the poor only because he occasionally is able to secure some new type of human brain upon whom he can work his nefarious experiments.”

ANOTHER EXTRACT.

“Damn the Bodymaster! I hate him! His hold over me is absolute—supreme.

“Vile as I have become, degraded as he has made me, my very being revolts at the thought of what he has forced me to do. It were better that I were dead—a thousand times better. But I can not even die. For he, curse him, will not let me. He owns my body and my soul.

“Yesterday I am certain that I killed another man. It was Johnston, the broker—a man I knew well in my other days—as kind-hearted an old fellow as ever lived. Many is the favor that he has done for me. Yet, at the dictation of Lessman, I took the poor old fellow’s life.

“God in Heaven! What a mixup it was! Lessman planned it all. He might have made it different—easier for those left behind to bear. But no—that is not his way. He loves the dramatic, the theatrical. But let me tell it just as it happened:

“Together, we went to Johnston’s house—Lessman and I. The poor old fellow has been under the weather for several days, but he has not allowed his illness to interfere with his philanthropic work. Lessman, in his guise of a worker among the poor and afflicted, had no trouble in gaining entrance. He introduced me as another laborer in the vineyard. I have changed so much as a result of what I have been through that Johnston failed to recognize me.

“Alone in the room with the old man, Lessman commanded me to do his bidding. I swear that I tried to withhold my hand, but I was powerless. It was not I, but another, who seized the scrawny neck in my muscular fingers and pressed—pressed—pressed against the windpipe until the haggard white face turned black and the gray eyes bulged forth under their shaggy white brows like glass beads.

“He tried to fight back—to defend himself—but what was his puny strength compared to mine? His efforts only incensed me the more. I shook him as a terrier roughs a rat. And the agonized expression on his face! It was awful. He tried to shriek for help, but so firm was my hold upon him that he could only splutter and gurgle.

“Lessman watched it all. He chuckled with glee at the feeble old man’s weak gasps and urged me to further efforts. Then, when I had laid the old fellow down upon his couch, it was The Bodymaster who, with a tremendous show of hypocrisy, shouted for help and jerked frantically at the bell which summoned family and servants.

“Never shall I forget the look of pathetic grief upon the face of the dead man’s aged helpmate. Liar that he is, Lessman told her a story of the old fellow’s sudden choking and of his death before we could summon help. The servants carried her swooning from the room.”

A FURTHER ENTRY.

“Mrs. Johnston is dying, they say, from grief. Lessman chuckles over it, thinking it a huge joke. When I am with him, I laugh, too. Away from him, I can see the horror—the devilish horror of it all.

“Lessman is richer by thousands of dollars. Mrs. Johnston, if she lives, will be almost a pauper. The sum of which she was filched represented practically their all—the savings of a lifetime. For Lessman presented a forged will in which almost everything, except a small amount for the widow, was left to charity with Lessman as the administrator.”