“Have at thee, Wau Shun!” exclaimed Quong Lung, fiercely, pressing the fatal cherry; and Wau Shun, sitting in the corner of the gorgeous chair, stiffened into a frightful attitude, and then began writhing dreadfully. To the heavy, punk-laden atmosphere of the room was added an odor of burning flesh.
Quong Lung rose from his seat and crossed the room to where his victim was being electrocuted. “Ho, ho, ho!” he laughed softly; “excellent Jim, most excellent Jim!”
As he watched the grim murder enacting before him, he saw, reflected in the mirror behind the chair of doom, the door that led into the room slowly open, and James Ray and a detective well known to Quong Lung entered swiftly.
“Throw up your hands, Quong Lung!” commanded the officer, as he covered the Chinaman with his pistol.
Taken in the midst of his crime, Quong Lung started and, backing against the fatal chair, he fell on the seat beside his victim, with a yell, as the tremendous current shot through him, killing him instantly.
“Turn off the current, Ray. For God’s sake, be quick!” shouted the officer, as the bodies writhed and twisted on the chair of death.
“Yes, yes,” came the leisurely reply, as Ray took the tuberose from the flower-stand; “there will be plenty of time after I have removed this sweet tenderling from this horrible atmosphere.”
A DOUBLE SHOT
By Stewart Edward White
Pat McCann came up from the plains into the hills in a bad humor with himself and the world. He had tried to be a cow-puncher and had been promptly bucked off; he had tackled the cooking problem and only escaped mobbing by resigning his job; now he had dragged his little, squab form, with its hanging arms, up into the hills to try mining. He applied to the first camp he came to. King, the foreman, gave him a job.