“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.”