WILLIAM WATERS was not in any way what you would call a braggart, yet upon two things did he pride himself. These two things were: first, an earnest and sincere contempt for all things supernatural; and, secondly, a marksmanship with a Colt’s No. 4 revolver which bordered on the marvelous. He had on several occasions proved his bravery by such feats as sleeping alone an entire night in a house said to be haunted, and by visiting a country graveyard at midnight, and digging up a corpse. He had likewise won numerous bets by pumping six bullets into an inch and a half bull’s eye at a distance of sixteen paces, and being a healthy and vigorous animal his pride was perhaps more or less excusable.
In the house in which Waters had his rooms there also lived a Fool. His particular brand of folly was practical joking, which is universally recognized by intelligent men as a particularly acute and dangerous kind of idiocy. As a child The Fool had soaked a neighbor’s cat in kerosene and then applied a match. Since then he had performed many other equally humorous feats.
After much planning The Fool devised a joke, the victim of which was to be The Man Who Knew Not Fear, as the jester sneeringly called Waters.
The prologue to this joke was the substitution of blanks in each of the six chambers of the No. 4 Colt’s, which hung over the headboard in William Waters’s sleeping-room, not as a weapon of defense, but as a glittering little possession dear to the heart of its owner.
The Fool had once, in the presence of all the people at the dinner table, asked Waters what he would do should he wake up at night and find a ghost in the room.
“Fire a bullet straight at his heart, so be sure and wear a breastplate,” Waters answered promptly, and the laugh had been on the joker.
After removing the cartridges from the revolver, The Fool withdrew the bullets from each, and placed them in his pocket. He had that day also laid in a supply of phosphorescent paint and several yards of white muslin.
Waters never locked his door at night, for he was as free from fear of all things physical as from those supernatural. This of course made the program which The Fool had arranged easy to carry out, though he would not have hesitated at a little thing like stealing the key and having an impression made. He was a very thorough practical joker.
That night as the French clock in the hall outside Waters’s room was striking twelve The Man Who Knew Not Fear was awakened by a rattling of chains and a dismal moaning.
As he opened his eyes he saw standing in the darkest corner of the room a white-robed figure, which glistened with phosphorescent lights as it waved its arms to and fro. Without a moment’s hesitation, Waters reached for his revolver, and leveling it at the moaning figure, fired full at its breast.