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 450 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.
Transcriber’s Note:
Author’s archaic and variable spelling and hyphenation is preserved.
Author’s punctuation style is preserved.
Any missing page numbers in this HTML version refer to blank or un-numbered pages in the original.