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[Transcriber's Note:

  This etext was produced from "Weird Tales" October, 1937.
  Extensive research did not uncover any evidence
  that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]




                  *       *       *       *       *




[Illustration: "Then I heard him in the hallway and on the stairs."]




The Homicidal Diary

By EARL PEIRCE, JR.

  What strange compulsion drove an ordinarily gentle and cultured man,
    on one night of each week, to roam the city streets and commit a
      ghastly crime?


I am writing this account of my friend Jason Carse in the interests of
both justice and psychiatry, and perhaps of demonology as well. There
is no greater proof of what I relate than the sequence of murders
which so recently shocked this city, the newspaper items regarding the
crimes, and especially the official report of the alienists who
examined Carse during his trial. I cannot expect to bring Doctor Carse
back to life, for he was hanged until dead, but I do hope that this
paper will offer new illumination on cases of criminal decapitation.

Justice and psychiatry are closely related, but it is difficult to
recognize the judicial importance of so _outré_ a subject as
demonology. Yet I emphatically assert that the case of Jason Carse is
irrevocably concerned with evil and dark lore such as mankind has not
known since the Holy Inquisition.

One is naturally prejudiced against Carse, for even I myself, his
lifelong acquaintance, was struck with repugnance when I first
realized the nature of his activities, but his death on the gallows
should foreclose biased reflection and permit the student to regard
his case in a purely empirical light. As I am the only man in complete
possession of the facts, it behooves me to give this astounding
information to the world.

Jason Carse was a brilliant and respected criminologist, and at the
time of his arrest he was recognized as one of the greatest
students of the modern world, a fact which has made his case one of
unparalleled notoriety. I was his roommate during the several years
we spent in law school, and, although he shot to the pinnacle of
his branch of jurisprudence while I was left to more prosaic
routine, we never lost the contact which has now become so valuable.
Our correspondence was frequent and regular since we were graduated,
and I can say with justifiable pride that Carse respected my
friendship as much as that of any other acquaintance, if not more.
It was this intimacy with his personal life which has enabled me, as
friend and confidant, to witness the revolting atavism which
resulted in such outrageous crimes.

I obtained my first hazy acquaintance with the crimes three months ago
when I received Carse's letter from Vienna. He had just discovered
sensational evidence in a famous criminal case--one of recurrent human
decapitation--and his consequent enthusiasm was so rabid that I was
afraid the morbidity of such matters was beginning to pervert his
senses. For several years I had become progressively aware of Carse's
melancholic attitude, and I had often recommended that he take a
vacation from criminal cases. His indefatigable enthusiasm for
research was all against my advice, and he had gone relentlessly ahead
to the tragic climax which my greatest fears could not have imagined.
This letter from Vienna, so eager with indomitable _il faut
travailler_, confirmed my suspicion that Carse had descended into the
depressing rut of monomania.

When he returned to America shortly afterward I crossed the country to
spend a few days with him, but he was so sickly and irritable that I
could do nothing to cheer his spirits. He continually brooded over the
case he had been investigating, and I should have known at that time
there was a dangerous neurotic compulsion stirring in his subconscious
mind.

Less than a week after my departure from the city the first of the
horrific head-hunting crimes was committed and the actual drama got
under way. I can recall reading the sensational accounts in the
newspapers and my anxious fear that this fresh display of criminal
perversion would excite Carse into a state nearing hysteria. I
telegraphed him that same day, begging his refusal to bother with the
case and requesting that he come to visit me. His reply was swift and
brief; he had already commenced his investigations of the head-hunting
crime and nothing on earth could deter him from his set course.
Knowing him as I did, I could do nothing but hope that the Head-hunter
would be swiftly captured and the case brought to a finish. It was an
unpleasant shock, therefore, when I read--exactly one week
later--that a second and identical crime had been committed.

     ~     ~     ~

Even in my own city, three thousand miles from the center of the
crimes, there was wild confusion at the announcement of this second
spectacular murder. The reader may recall the international effects of
the infamous "Ripper" crimes which terrified London a few decades ago
and he will understand how rapidly the Head-hunter's fame spread
through crime-conscious America. Both murders were made particularly
mysterious because of the disappearance of the victims' heads. I knew
the damaging influence which these doings would produce upon Carse,
for he had always been interested in decapitations, and his thesis at
the University of Graz had been based upon the mad career of Emil
Drukker, the Head-hunter of Cologne.

I wrote again to Carse and begged him to abandon his studies in these
new murders, but, as before, his response was cold and discouraging.
There was a wild and almost fanatical tone in his letter which was
indicative of his obsessed mind, and an ugly premonition occurred to
me that this would be the breaking-point of his career.

The third and fourth murders, so horribly identical with the first
two, came about at weekly intervals, and the city was in the grip of
strangling terror. There was no rime or reason for the crimes, and yet
the diabolical precision of the murderer seemed to indicate he was a
madman of uncanny intelligence. In all four cases his victims were
vagabonds and people of the lowest order. In none of the murders had
the victim been assaulted, but the head had disappeared, seemingly for
ever. There was not a shred of evidence pointing to the solution, and,
except that the police knew him to be a homicidal maniac, there was
not a single person in a city of several millions whom they could call
the murderer. Far worse than the four murders committed was the belief
that they would continue week after week to an indeterminable
conclusion.

I left for the city by plane on the evening of the discovery of the
fifth victim, and during the trans-country flight I read Carse's own
statement in the _Metropolitan Gazette_ citing the crime as an
atavistic expression of animalism. The fact that two of the five
victims had been men, according to Carse's theory, belied the popular
suspicion that the criminal was a homicidal sadist. Carse expressed
the belief that the murderer was in the grip of some inherent
savagery, and that the ghastly murders would continue until he wore
himself out by the sheer expenditure of energy.

I reached the city shortly after sundown, and at once I felt the awful
tension which had settled upon everyone in it. Men and women moved
furtively, airport officials and police examined every strange face
with cold and scrutinizing suspicion, and even my taxi-driver, a small
mousy man, kept his fear-laden dark eyes continually reverting to the
mirror as he whirled me through the slight evening traffic. I was
surprized, therefore, in view of this mutual distrust, to find that
Jason Carse, a veteran criminalist, had discharged all of his servants
and was living alone in his grim house behind a barricaded door.

The most unpleasant shock was the unaccountably cold manner in which
Carse received my visit, and his positive annoyance that I had forced
myself so unexpectedly upon him. He would not explain why he had
discharged his servants, nor the secluded life he was now leading, but
there was little difficulty in realizing the fatiguing effects which
these recent crimes had pronounced upon him. He was virtually a
stranger as we met in the hallway and shook hands.

"I wish you'd go to a hotel," he said bluntly. "I don't want anyone
here."

But I didn't go to a hotel. I told him flatly that there was no other
course open to me but to stay and take care of him; for obviously he
wasn't taking care of himself, and his dismissal of the household help
had precipitated a needless burden on his already over-laden
shoulders. He needed food, for he was thin to emaciation, and I made
him dress at once and accompany me to a restaurant where I saw that he
ate a decent meal. I then led him to the theater, a particularly
lively musical comedy, and kept him in his seat until the curtain had
fallen. But my efforts seemed of no avail, as he was continually
depressed and absorbed in his own reflections. That night before
retiring he came to my room and again asked me to leave.

"It's for your own good," he said with strange harshness. "For God's
sake believe what I say!"

     ~     ~     ~

For the next several days I watched him sink lower and lower into
despondency of so contagious a nature that I felt the insufferable
pangs of it myself. He worked late at night on the murder cases,
referring constantly to autopsy protocols and police memoranda,
and more than once I saw him reading his Bible. On several occasions
he visited the county morgue and examined the remains of the
Head-hunter's victims, and following each such visit he lapsed
into a state of mental and physical agitation that exhausted him
within a few hours.

The nights were almost unbearable, and I would lie awake for hours
listening to the mumbles and moans which came from his room,
oftentimes distinguishing such words as "God forbid it! God forbid
it!" and frequently he would scream the word "Head-hunter." There was
no doubt that Carse had delved too deeply into this case, and that
hour by hour he was descending into the clutch of a dangerous
neurosis.

During my stay with him I engaged several servants, but he discharged
them, and I was unable to reconcile him to my point of view. His
resentment of my visit became more acute as the days passed, and I was
beginning to fear that he would forcibly eject me.

It was easy to explain this increased irritability, for I myself, as
well as every soul in the city, was nervously awaiting the next prowl
of the Head-hunter, and in it I recognized more fuel for the fire that
was burning Carse's reason. He was waiting for the fatal Monday night
as a man waits for his doom, and each hour found him closer to a
mental attack. On Sunday afternoon I discovered him in my room packing
my luggage.

"You must go now," he said. "I appreciate your interest in me, but now
you must go--you must!"

The tremor of anxiety in his voice nearly convinced me that he was
right, but doggedly I clung to my set purpose to save him in spite of
himself. I could not leave him alone in face of the developments which
would occur sometime between then and Tuesday morning, and I told him
so.

"Fool!" he exploded; "I can do nothing with you. Stay if you wish--but
it's on your own head!"

The irony of that final statement, whether intentional or not, is
something I shall remember to my grave. I don't think that Carse meant
it literally--_on my own head_--but I was unable to shake his words
out of my ears, and throughout the night and the following day they
hung about me like a dirge.

Carse did not sleep at all that Sunday night, but paced up and down
in his study while a fierce, alarming expression hardened on his
features. Nor could I sleep, for his continued pacing tore my nerves
to shreds, and I spent the night alternately in my own room and at the
partly open doorway of the library, where I was able to watch him in
secrecy. Several times I saw him bend over a small book and study it
with the intent regard of a disciple, and each time that he referred
to a certain page he pounded his fist on the desk and cried to
himself: "God forbid! God forbid!"

I should have realized what he meant. I should have known and been
prepared, but how blind my friendship made me to the horrific
implication of those repeated words!

Monday came and went in a slow drizzle of rain which only added to the
somber quiet of the city, and as the evening approached and wore on I
felt myself caught in the irresistible tide of fearful anticipation
which warned of the sixth appearance of the Head-hunter. The streets
were deserted throughout the day, and with but few exceptions the only
pedestrians were police officers, who now traveled in pairs or squads.
The evening papers were brutally frank in predicting that before dawn
a sixth headless corpse would be discovered, and this expectation was
shared by all.

Carse was at home all day and refused to answer the telephone or to
allow me to answer it for him. He ate sparingly, with his same
preoccupation, and, contrary to my expectations, he appeared to have
lapsed into a state akin to normality, like a man who contemplates a
preordained and inexorable occurrence.

At six o'clock he came to me, ghastly haggard and thin, and again
asked me to leave his house, but I refused this zero-hour request. He
shrugged and went back to his study. I watched him for a while and saw
that he was studying that queer little book which so deeply affected
him, and I again heard him utter those despairing words: "God forbid!
God forbid!"

     ~     ~     ~

I went to bed at a little after ten and tried to sleep, but the
city-wide excitement seeped into my room and kept me tossing from the
thrusts of nightmares. At midnight Carse came up and stopped just
outside my door, obviously listening to determine whether I was
asleep. The silence was uncanny for a moment; then I heard a sharp
metallic clicking and he went on to his room. After he had closed his
door, I swept my sheet aside and went to my own door. Carse had locked
it from the outside!

I called to him for an explanation of this conduct, but he either
didn't hear me or chose to ignore my requests, for the house remained
grimly silent. Returning to bed, I managed somehow to doze off.

At two o'clock I was awakened by the sound of someone's walking in the
hallway. I sat bolt-upright in bed and heard the unmistakable approach
of footsteps coming down the corridor from Carse's bedroom. The tread
was stealthy and determined, and as it drew closer to my room I was
conscious of a cold mask of sweat clinging to my face, because the
footsteps did not sound like those of Jason Carse!

The feeling hit me and hit me again until I was left stunned with the
horror of it. It did not sound like Carse! But if it was not Carse,
_who was it?_

I wanted to call out his name, yet I felt, with some indefinable
sense, that the treader in the hall was unaware that I was in the
house, and for that reason it could not have been Carse. I was afraid
to make an outcry, and I sat stricken with dread as the footsteps went
past my door descending the stairs. A moment later there was a noise
of cutlery being moved in the kitchen, and the front door opened and
closed.

As it had come, that strange prescience vanished and I tried to reason
out what I had heard. Of course the man was Carse; who could it have
been save him, for were we not alone in the house? I sat for hours on
the bed working up a determination to shake the truth out of him when
he returned, but shortly after four o'clock my strength ran out of me
and I shook with fear as I heard that awful ghost-like tread ascending
the stairs. My heart beat wildly when the person reached my door and
twisted the knob to enter.

One thought flashed through my head: Thank God the door was locked!
The terrible feeling that it was not Carse came back upon me, and I
sat motionless as I listened to the sounds from outside. For a moment
there were no sounds from the intruder, but I did hear a faint
tap-tap-tap like that of a liquid falling to the wooden floor. In a
minute the knob was released and the footsteps continued down the hall
to Carse's room.

Any attempt to explain my thoughts as I sat smoking throughout the
night would only add to the confusion of these revelations. They were
not sane and rational thoughts, but rather strange suggestions and
premonitions. I thought myself to be in the presence of a tremendous
evil.

In the morning Carse was up early, and moved back and forth in the
corridor with strange industry. He was crying, for his sobs came
disturbingly to my ears, and once I heard him descend into the cellar
and there was a faint digging sound as he performed some outlandish
task. Then I heard him in the hallway and on the stairs. I heard the
splashing of water and the sound of scrubbing.

I pounded on the door for him to let me out, but it was not until
nearly noon that he finished his chores and finally opened my door. He
was stooped and fatigued, and without bothering to return my
amenities, he turned away and went to his study.

     ~     ~     ~

I went into the hallway and noticed, as I had surmised, that the floor
showed signs of recent and vigorous cleaning. I walked down to his
room and looked in, not surprized to notice that here, too, was the
unmistakable evidence of scrubbing. I knew there was only one more
thing to do; I must go down to the cellar and unearth what he had
buried there!

The horrible truth had been dawning upon me for hours, and when I came
face to face with him in the kitchen at the head of the cellar stairs
I looked squarely into his eyes with the full realization that Jason
Carse was the Head-hunter.

I was not frightened--not for my personal safety, at any rate--but a
sensation of sickening horror went through me as I looked into his
tired face and understood that at last he had fallen into the cesspool
which had tormented him since early years. The words of the coroner
came back into my ears: "He is a madman of uncanny intelligence," and
I knew that he knew I recognized him for what he was.

The awful silence of our conflicting glances was unbroken for several
seconds, and then words came uncontrollably from my mouth and I
managed to snap that nerve-cracking tension.

"What's in the cellar?" I cried. "What have you buried there?"

"If anything happens to you," he returned, ignoring my questions, "I
am not to be blamed. I warned you in time to get away from this house.
What do _you_ think is in the cellar?"

"I dare to suggest there are six small graves."

An ugly smirk went across his face and he cast a glance at the cellar
door.

"You always were too smart for your own good," he said softly.
"Knowledge can be dangerous."

"How did you think you could get away with it?" I screamed, only too
well aware of his implication. "My God, Carse! Six human heads!"

His jaw hardened and he took a menacing step toward me. Then suddenly
he stopped, a queer tragic expression coming over his face. He put his
hand to his eyes as if to blot out some horrible memory.

"I know, I know!" he cried hysterically. "Six heads--six human heads!
Do you think I planned six heads?"

A shudder went through him and he buried his face in both hands and
sobbed like a child.

My personal fear gradually subsided as I watched this remorseful
quiescence which had come upon him. I realized that he had passed the
emotional climax of his crime, and that he was now suffering that
terrible reaction which must haunt and terrify all criminals. I took
this advantage to gain control of him, for there was no way of
determining when his madness would flare again.

"There is only one course open for me," I told him soberly. "I must
turn you over to the police. Things like this must be stopped."

He pulled his hands away from his face and stared at me, his eyes
fired with dread. "No, no!" he screamed. "Don't give me away. Please,
in the name of God, don't give me away! I am sick, I tell you! I am
not responsible!"

A feeling of helpless pity went through me as he sank to his knees in
hysterical imploration, but I steeled myself against him. The man was
mad and dangerous. He must be stamped out without mercy.

"There are asylums----" I began.

"You cannot!" he cried. "You know what they do in asylums. _I_ know!
Please help me. I am not responsible. It is the book--_the book_."

"What book?"

"Drukker--that diary! Can't you see what it has done to me? It's eaten
into my brain until I am mad. It's driven me like a slave until I have
no other bidding. It taught me how to do these things. It _makes_ me
do them."

I pulled him to his feet and shook him unmercifully. He was crying and
retching, a pitiable and horrible sight to look upon.

"You are talking irrationally," I cried. "I am your friend and I want
to help you, but my first duty is the public welfare. There are six
human heads buried in your cellar. There must be no more."

"No more?" he laughed shrilly and threw up both his hands to indicate
the count of ten. "No more, you say? There will be ten more before it
stops. Ten more! That's what the book says!"

"You want ten?" I demanded incredulously, struck numb by his
callousness. "You want ten more to add to those six? Carse, Carse!
They are not cabbages you are counting; they are human heads. Do you
think I am a fiend to let this continue? No; it must end--it must end
on the gallows."

"_He_ died on the gallows!"

"He? Whom are you talking about? Try to make sense, Carse. I am your
friend; trust me."

"I am talking of Emil Drukker--the man who taught me how to do these
things. He is responsible for them, not I. He is the one to hang for
them. Dig him out of his grave and hang him again!"

     ~     ~     ~

I pushed him gently into a chair, for his collapse seemed imminent.
Spittle was running from his mouth, and his retching continued in
spasms that shook him to his teeth.

"I am your friend," I told him again. "I want to help you, but you
must get control of yourself. Why do you say you are not responsible?
What drove you to commit these crimes?"

He looked at me searchingly and his eyes cleared. He swallowed a mass
of incoherent words in an effort to master himself; then his hand
pressed over mine.

"You are right; I must get control of myself," he said. "I have done
some horrible things which can never be forgiven, but I swear to you
that I have not done them intentionally. And I am not mad as you
think. I am in the power of that book. I am the puppet of a horror
that has outlived all natural deaths."

A feeling of relief passed over me as I saw him settle into a state of
rational observation. I hoped it would last, for not three yards away
from him, lying on top of the kitchen table, was a seven-inch butcher
knife. My only hope was to preserve his state by permitting him to
tell his story, and in that way to persuade him to accept the
inevitable consequences of his crimes. I drew up a chair beside his
own, yet kept myself alert to ward off any lunge he might make for the
knife.

"What is this horror which has mastered you?" I asked in an effort to
gain his confidence. "And what is this book?"

"I told you about it in my letter from Vienna six weeks ago. I told
you I had discovered a rare book--an awful and compelling book. It was
the diary of Emil Drukker."

"Where did you get it?"

He cast a swift glance about the room, then suddenly his eyes fell
upon the butcher knife. I saw him tense, saw his lips twitch under the
lash of a horrible temptation.

"Carse, tell me about it!" I yelled, to distract him. "Where did you
get the book?"

He pulled his eyes away from the knife and let them burn into my face.
For a moment, undecided, he was silent; then his brows straightened
and he leaned forward in his chair.

"Do you remember my Graz thesis? It was based upon the life of Emil
Drukker in an effort to explain what impulse drove him to cut off
human heads. It was a good thesis, one of the best on the subject, and
it brought a lot of response from criminologists all over the world.
About six months after it was published I received a letter from a man
who was once Emil Drukker's personal servant. He was living in Cologne
right close to the old Drukker castle, and he wanted to see me. He
told me that he knew the Drukker crimes from the first to the
last--sixteen of them.

"So I went, of course, and met this man, who was small and old, with
an obsession for Emil Drukker. He talked for a long time, and then he
handed me the diary and said it explained more vividly than I could
ever imagine the impulse which prompted Drukker's recurrent human
decapitations. He told me that Drukker had written each entry while
the memory of the crime was still fresh in his mind. It was a terrible
book to read, he warned, and unless I had the intellectual strength of
a mental Hercules I would never forgive myself for having opened it.

"Naturally I was too excited to heed his warning, and on that same
night I took the book away with me. I promised to return it to him
when I had finished, but he wouldn't accept this plan. Instead he said
that he would come and get the book when I was through. It was a
mysterious business and should have told me to expect no good to come
of it. I asked him how he would know when I had finished with the
book, and I shall never forget that evil smile and disdainful shrug of
his response.

"'I shall know well enough when I read the newspapers,' he told me.
'This time it will be six or seven--in about four months from now.'

"Do you understand what he meant by those words? He knew what would
happen! And yet he let me carry that book away with me! In the name of
God, what kind of a man is he?"

"Why didn't you destroy the book?" I demanded of him.

"I couldn't! It was too fascinating, too powerful to destroy. I read
that book with the reverence of an ecclesiastic until I knew every
word between the covers, and the whole ghastly parade of Drukker's
sixteen murders passed before my eyes like figures on a stage. Ten
weeks ago I began to have nightmares that reconstructed the crimes of
Drukker, going chronologically from Number One to Number Sixteen, then
beginning all over again.

"When I returned to America seven weeks ago I still had the book with
me, and the contents were so deeply engraved on my brain that I could
think of nothing else. Day and night I thought about it, until at
length I found myself actually imagining how I would go about
emulating his crimes. Then I began to get the horrible impulse to
fondle a butcher knife--Drukker used a butcher knife, you know!--and
more than once I was struck with the scarcely resistible urge to cut
off someone's head. It didn't matter whose head--but just a head!"

"Easy, Carse!" I cried with a wary glance at the kitchen table. "Tell
me the rest, but don't excite yourself. What happened then?"

     ~     ~     ~

He slid back in a sort of stupor, shook his head several times, then
passed his hand across his eyes in a gesture of despair.

"You ought to know damned well what happened if you were listening at
your door last night. Six weeks ago I went to bed and dreamed
horribly. I had just finished reading the first confession in the
diary--some strange impulse made me read _that_ confession and no
other--and in my sleep I saw a human head staring at me. It was a
cruel, Teutonic head, and I knew that it was Emil Drukker's head
hanging in a gallows rope. Then he smiled at me; a horrible, vivid,
real smile, and the head vanished. From then on, for how long I cannot
say, I sat as a spectator and watched the complete action of Drukker's
Number One.

"I saw Drukker leave his house and walk down a dark street with no
other illumination than a few scattered electric lights. I tried to
imagine how they were electric lights, for they had only gas in his
day, but nevertheless they were modern lights, and the street looked
like the street in front of my own house. He walked about ten blocks;
then he saw a woman standing on a street corner. There wasn't another
soul in sight. He crept closer to her, then drew out his butcher knife
and hid it in the folds of his coat--a coat which looked strangely
like my own wind-breaker. He first tried to talk with the woman, but
she was not interested; so he pulled out the knife and brought it
sweeping down across her throat. The blood spurted like a fountain and
overran Drukker's hand, but he only laughed and pushed the woman to
the ground, then knelt over her and began a horrible sawing movement
with his knife. When he had finished, he drew a towel from his pocket
and wrapped the head tightly to prevent the blood from trailing him
home. He came back the same way and entered the house, and at the
foot of the stairs he unwrapped the towel and held the thing only by
its hair as he climbed the steps. The last thing I saw or heard was
the blood dripping on each step as he ascended to the upper hall."

"My God!" I whispered in horror.

"But that's not the worst," Carse cried as he grabbed my arm. "When I
awakened the next morning it was late and the shrieks of the newsboys
stabbed into my ears. They were yelling about a cruel, brutal murder
which had been committed sometime during the night. I swung my feet
off the bed to arise, when my eyes fell upon the diary which rested on
my night-table. It was open to the confession of Number One as if I
had been reading it in my sleep. There was a strange and terrifying
dread in my soul as my feet struck the floor. I felt something wet and
sticky touch my toes; then I looked down. It was a woman's head
staring up at me.

"The room was smeared with blood from one end to the other, and there
was a gore-caked knife resting beside the head, and a crimson towel
lay across my bedpost. But there wasn't a drop of blood on my hands!

"I couldn't even attempt to explain it. I only knew that a woman had
been murdered and that her severed head was in my bedroom. I didn't
know what to do. I couldn't force myself into the belief that I was
the murderer, and I stood stunned with the weird horror of knowing
that Emil Drukker's Number One had been re-enacted and that I had
played his own role. Where could I turn? Whom could I ask for advice?
If I was mad they would commit me to an asylum; if I was not mad they
would hang me.

"I carried the head to the cellar and buried it; then I cleaned up the
blood and burned the towel. In my wardrobe I found a suit of clothes
smeared with fresh blood. I found my shoes and hat splattered with it,
and then I found my discarded gloves stained a violent crimson, with
each finger stiffened as the blood had coagulated about it. No wonder
there wasn't any blood on my hands!

"I went over the house from top to bottom and eradicated every stain
that might be evidence against me; then I sat down with the diary in
one hand and the morning newspaper in the other. I compared the two
crimes. They were identical, even to the burying of the heads. Emil
Drukker had done exactly the same as I had done: he carried the head
in a towel, he left it in his room overnight, he buried it in his
cellar, and he cleaned up the blood the following morning. But there
was one ghastly difference: Emil Drukker had committed his crime with
full purposeful foreknowledge, whereas I had committed my crime under
hypnotic inducement!

"There is no other answer for what has happened in these last six
weeks. I have racked my brain to find another solution, but there is
none. I am being hypnotized by some unexplainable force, and once each
week I come under the power of this evil which directs and commands my
being. Last night I went to bed with the full knowledge of what would
occur during the night. That is why I locked you in your room. This
morning when I awakened I found the head exactly where the other five
had lain; then I carried it to the basement and buried it. I cleaned
up the blood and burned the towel.

"If you are numbed with horror, try to imagine how I feel about it.
Six crimes in six weeks! And I can only thank merciful God that it
will end with only one more. Perhaps it is ended now. That German
servant who loaned me the diary said it would be only six or seven."

"Do you think the police will believe all of this?" I demanded. "What
you have told me has no sane explanation. It--it's demonism!"

     ~     ~     ~

Carse smiled pitiably. "There are more things in heaven and earth," he
began; then he heaved his shoulders as if flinging off an attempt at
levity. "The human mind is a strange organ, and no man can explain its
mysteries. I have seen too much of atavism to ridicule any theories.
There is nothing we can do but wait and hope that the German servant's
prediction is true. Six or seven. _Six_--or _seven_?"

"Do you mean you expect me to grant you leniency?" I exclaimed. "Great
heavens, Carse, there have been six horrible murders! Society demands
a reckoning."

"I have atoned enough for ten times six!" he cried. "Have you no soul
in you? The crimes will stop now. The German said they would, and
everything else he predicted has come true. As my lifelong friend it
is your duty to see me through."

"But those six----"

"No man can bring them back to life, but I am still a living man and
you must save me. I shall divide my estate among the families of the
six, and I swear to you that I shall never open a book on criminology
again. You must do it--you must!"

"Do you honestly believe it is over?" I asked hoarsely.

"I do; with all my heart and soul, I do!"

"But you would say that anyway," I cried. "Suppose there is a Number
Seven? The blood will be upon my hands as well as yours. It is an
awful responsibility, Carse. There must be no more."

"There won't be. I swear there won't be!"

He threw himself at me in an hysterical outburst of emotion. He tried
to smile through the tears in his eyes, but the sight was so awful
that I turned my head.

"I am still unconvinced," I said grimly. "The possibility of Number
Seven is too important to overlook. Let me see Drukker's diary."

"Why?" he backed away and stared at me. "Why do you want to read the
diary?"

"I want to read account Number Seven."

Carse came forward again and grabbed my arm. He shook it. "What good
will that do?" he asked anxiously, "if there are only six of them?
Besides, it's not a book you ought to read."

"Give me the diary!" I demanded again.

He scowled at me for a moment; then, shrugging, he reached into his
pocket and withdrew a small leather-bound book. It was well worn, as
if by many thumbs, and in faded gold letters across the cover were the
words: Personal Diary of Emil Drukker, J. U. D.

"Sit down," I commanded. "And try to keep your nerves together. I
shall do everything I can for you."

He backed away and dropped into a chair, his eyes fastened upon me in
a look of almost majestic joy. And yet there was an undertone in his
expression which I could not define. There was defiance there ... and
fear. One of his hands rested on the near-by table, less than two feet
from the hilt of the butcher knife, and the fingers of that hand
twitched nervously.

     ~     ~     ~

With an odd sense of uneasiness I flicked open the first several pages
of the book and skimmed through the contents. My German was poor, yet
I was able to understand the significance of what Emil Drukker had
written in his large, scrawling hand. I read the first six accounts,
then stared at Carse in amazement. His six crimes and Drukker's first
six were so identical they might have been conscious reproductions. In
all cases the victims were the same sex, the same age, and were in the
same general walk of life. I then turned to account Number Seven and
after reading a few wretched lines I gasped with horror: _it was a
seven-year-old girl!_

Carse was on his feet, his jaw grim and determined. He stared fiercely
at me, waiting my response.

"Carse," I muttered dazedly, "it--it----"

"You can't back out," he cried as he stepped toward me. "There will be
no seven, I tell you. It's ended on six. I swear it to you!"

"No," I said, "I cannot permit such a risk. Did you read account
Number Seven? He not only cut off the head, but he dismembered----"

"You can't back out!" he screamed as he shook my arm. "You can't, you
can't!"

"But Carse, this is a girl--a mere child. Don't you realize it would
be unpardonable even for you? No, I can never take such a risk. I must
turn you over to the police."

Carse slapped me viciously, then stumbled back against the table. His
face was a mask of suffused blood, his eyes wild with desperation.

"Damn you!" he cried savagely. "You are no friend; you're a cheat, a
betrayer!"

Suddenly his groping fingers touched the butcher knife and he drew
himself taut. His fingers wound around the hilt like slowly moving
worms. For a moment there was scarcely a breath between us; then he
lifted his arm and brought the knife slowly out before him. I watched,
horror-stricken, unable to lift my feet from the floor. A numbing
paralysis of fright seemed to come over me.

"Carse, Carse!" I muttered.

He didn't hear me; his body was tensed for the deadly spring that
would bring him down upon my throat. I saw a ripple of galvanizing
energy race through his hands; then I managed an outcry. At the same
instant he was in the air.

     ~     ~     ~

There is no need for me to relate the events which followed; for the
newspapers had assiduously described the capture and arrest of Carse,
and his subsequent history, brief as it was, has become public
property. To my dying day I shall carry the five-inch scar along my
cheek where his knife descended upon me, and I can never cease to be
thankful for that one outburst of absolute fear which tore from my
lips and attracted a passing policeman; otherwise I might have been
Number Seven in the grim line of epitaphs that marked the close of
this fantastic case. Only by bludgeoning Carse with his stick could
the officer overcome him, and it was necessary to keep him in a
straitjacket until the hour of his execution.

It is a curious fact that the psychiatrists who examined Carse,
several of them his former pupils, could not find him unbalanced
enough to be irresponsible for his crimes. Those long and tiring
vigils in the mental clinic will haunt me for life; there was no end
to their searching and probing of his subconscious mind, no end to the
tests and questions, the examinations and analyses which ended
hopelessly against him. But even if they had found him insane,
violently and homicidally insane, they would not have dared report
such a finding to the court. Society demanded a death in return for a
death, and Jason Carse was nailed to his coffin at the first moment of
his arrest. Had he been spared the gallows by the court, he would not
have been spared the gallows by the mobs that milled about the
detention prison; for continually throughout the trial was the grim
reminder that society represented by mobs has not yet forgotten the
use of lynch law.

Carse's death put a definite end to the head-hunting crimes in this
city, and for the first time in over six weeks the metropolitan area
has been able to breathe freely. I have lost a faithful and sincere
friend; but I lost him, not on the gallows, but three months ago when
he first discovered the diary of Emil Drukker.

It is the diary, not my mourning, which has prompted me to pen this
account of my knowledge of the head-hunting crimes. During the trial,
as you may remember, I sought to introduce the diary as major evidence
in support of Carse's somnambulistic manias, but it was waived out of
court with ridicule and contempt.

One must admit that Carse's story as he told it to me, and as I later
reiterated it to the court, was fantastic and highly improbable. But
there are certain irrefutable arguments in support of Carse's story
which shed a terrible light, not alone upon the case, but on all
criminal cases of similar nature. For one thing, a hypnotic
examination by competent state alienists was completely unsuccessful
in the attempt to bring forth his subconscious knowledge of any of the
six murders. Secondly, Carse was unable, despite his most intense and
willing efforts, to reconstruct even the smallest part of any one of
the crimes. His only acquaintance with his own alleged activities was
brought to him in _dreams_.

A further significant fact, which the court ignored as irrelevant, was
the ghastly identity of Carse's supposed crimes and those confessed by
Emil Drukker. It is impossible that this duality of murders could be
brought about by mere coincidence, for the similarity of detail was
carried too far. This fact alone presupposes the statement that there
was a horrible and unnatural bondage between Emil Drukker and Jason
Carse--the bondage of the diary!

One night of each week for six weeks Jason Carse was compelled by some
unknown power to dream about a murder confessed and described in
Drukker's diary. On each of these nights, while Carse watched it in a
dream, an identical murder was committed somewhere in the city and the
man whom he recognized as the murderer was Emil Drukker. It was as if
Carse's dreams, projected into reality by the sheer vividness of the
diary, had resurrected Emil Drukker from his grave and set him free to
re-enact his former crimes!

I am mad, you will say; but I speak of demonism and not law. How else
can you explain the duality of these murders? How else can you explain
Carse's ignorance of the crimes? How else can you explain those brutal
dreams, the fruit of whose reality Carse found each morning on the
floor beside his bed? Nor is it enough to stop alone with this
question. How many men besides Jason Carse have spent sleepless nights
over the diary of Emil Drukker?

The newspapers will answer that question each time they are opened; in
Paris the police discover a headless body lying along the wharves, and
the murderer is still unknown; in Berlin a college professor kills
himself upon the discovery of a human head lying near his bed with his
own hunting-knife stuck to the hilt into its brain; in Stockholm the
police discover the bodies of two women lying in an empty house--their
heads have not yet been found; and in Cleveland, one of our greatest
cities, is reported the discovery of the tenth headless corpse in a
series of murders that has gripped the city in terror. What kind of
person commits such crimes? And why do the missing heads turn up years
later in the basement of a house owned by a mild-appearing and docile
old man?

Jason Carse was not the first man to pay with his life for crimes such
as these, nor is he the last. It is well to beware of sickish-smelling
trunks that are left in deserted houses, and I caution the reader
against stepping on misshapen bundles of clothing which he may find
half hidden in a clump of bushes.

For the diary of Emil Drukker is missing from the drawer where I left
it, and I have been told that a strange, Germanic-looking man was seen
prowling about the house just before its disappearance.

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Transcriber's Note:

  Author's archaic and variable spelling and hyphenation is
  preserved.

  Author's punctuation style is preserved.

  Passages in italics indicated by _underscores_.