He jumped to his feet and stood there for a minute, his knees knocking drunkenly together, and his teeth rattling like a pair of castanets, while his eyes stared straight ahead of him at the bare wall, and then he started for the picture again. But he never reached it. God in his mercy spared him the agony of that last look, and he fell forward, one hand clutching the drapery, which went down with him to the floor and left me staring at the thing it had covered.
I looked, and something dragged me nearer, for painted on the canvas I saw an evil, formless thing which made my blood run cold. It might have been a man, for it stood upon two feet, and had arms and a head, and yet, thank God, it was no man. Or it might have been a devil, for if ever an imp of hell looked down from canvas it must have had a face like that. Yet there were no definite outlines to it. When you tried to place a certain contour it faded off into the somber background, and all that remained was the head, a great flabby thing without any nose which looked down at you and grinned horribly.
If that was the demon which had haunted Richard Crew’s fevered and disordered brain for two long years, I thanked my God that I was not a drinking man. I looked again and could not turn my eyes away. Then, as I looked, I felt that indescribable, sickening fear coming over me that I had read in the dead man’s eyes.
The grinning thing seemed to be moving slowly. I could see the rocking motion of the body as it waddled toward me.
By a mighty effort of the will I tore myself from the spot, and seizing a French dueling sword that hung on the wall, I hacked and cut that leering face till only an empty frame remained, with a few clinging shreds of tattered canvas.
FINIS
[FOOTNOTES:]
[1] Copyright by S. S. McClure & Co.