“Ah! that’s it. I missed you from the car and suspected something wrong. Brandon seemed to be asleep and the woman was laughing. That was enough. I collared my man.”
Joe Seagraves reached over and gently shook Brandon, who, still sleeping like a rock, had slumped low down in the angle formed by the seat and the window.
“Come out of it!” the detective bawled at his companion, “we’re getting in.”
But Brandon slept on. Seagraves waited a moment, then shook him again, almost violently.
“Come on, Larry!” he said, himself rising.
But Brandon did not stir, and Seagraves darted a questioning glance at Olga, still handcuffed fast to the seat. To his amazement and alarm the woman was smiling, triumphantly, terribly. A vague surmise, which had come into Seagraves head hours before, was now confirmed.
There was no doubting that leering and awful smile. She had bitten the blood from her carmine lips. Olga Slavsky had gone stark mad!
In all the years that followed, Joe Seagraves was never able to free his memory from the haunting horror of the thing he beheld when, Brandon not reacting to violent shakes, he grew suspicious and lifted his unresponsive friend’s big hat off his head—or rather off—a vacant-eyed and staring dummy head!
PAUL SLAVSKY had not returned as Olga had predicted he would, but a last gruesome reminder of his own hideous handiwork was nevertheless present.