Category: pulp classics

RANE RANDALL slouched in one of Limpy’s chairs completely engrossed with thought. He didn’t see the Air Cop eyeing him from the doorway; nor did he see Limpy nudge the barman and say:

“They’re after him again. Take him a highball and ask if he knows Moses.”

The barman looked at Randall, then at the Air Cop. “I’ll bet that’s why they call him Rainy,” he said mournfully; “there’s always a storm when he’s around.”

“Sure,” agreed Limpy with a grin, “but he’s a good customer and always pays later for the damage when he tries to take the place apart, so get ready for a blackout.”

The barman took the drink to Randall’s table, set it down and mopped the varnished wood with his towel. “Limpy wants to know if you’re acquainted with Moses,” he muttered indetectably.

“Huh?” asked Randall, looking up quickly.

“Don’t look now,” warned the barman, “but they’re after you again.” He nodded toward the door.

The barman left and several seconds later Randall turned lazily to look at the doorway. He eyed the Air Cop, mildly surprised. So far as he knew, they couldn’t pin anything on him except incipient vagrancy, and while the situation demanded attention—immediate attention—it wasn’t a penitentiary offense. He turned back to his table, looked sternly at his glass and attempted to lose himself in a maze of low finance.

“Wrane Randall, rocketman?” asked a voice at his side a few moments later

Randall looked up at the Air Cop, then got slowly to his feet. It appeared that he was being polite, but he had discovered long ago that there was nothing like being prepared.

“Yeah, that’s me,” he admitted. “What do you want?”

“Come along.”

The Air Cop grasped Randall’s wrist and tried to flip his arm up behind his back. But Randall couldn’t see things that way and presented the Air Cop with a fistful of fingers.

The Air Cop did a quick-step adagio backward

on rubbery legs, tripped over a chair and went down. And the lights went out! Randall leaped for the nearest exit, went through to the alley and found himself in the grip of two husky patrolmen.

This time each had an arm and he wasn’t in any position to engage in sanguinary retaliations. Especially so, a moment later when one of the patrolmen jabbed a sapper into his side and turned on the juice. All the “jump” went out of Randall’s body immediately.

They carried him back to the entrance of Limpy’s where they found the Air Cop waiting.

“Ah, got him, I see,” he approved, wiping the blood from his mouth with an expensive handkerchief. Nothing, in an Air Cop’s opinion, was too good for an Air Cop, and as they were the private army of the Air Chief, outranking all local, state and national officers, they were in a position to indulge their opinions.

THE paralysis of the sapper was wearing off.

Randall gave a premonitory heave. One of the patrolmen brought out the sapper again to quiet him, but the Air Cop took the weapon and motioned the patrolman away.

“Go to headquarters and get a couple of squads of men, then come back here and rip all the wiring out of this dive. You needn’t be gentle, and you needn’t put it back,” he said with a grin. “Teach them a lesson.”

Then he turned to Randall. “I have orders to bring you in, in good condition—no bruises. So move along quietly and don’t count on any chances for escape. At the first sign of your getting mean, I’ll give you enough of the sapper to make you be a good boy for several hours. My ship is on the Administration Building roof. Now, march ahead!”

Randall staggered along, wishing his legs would behave, but somewhat relieved that he wasn’t to be accorded the usual treatment. When the Air Cops went after someone, it was usually merely an informal sentence of death. For instance, when they had an Irredentist, the common procedure was to allow an attempt to escape, then take in a dead man.

He was shoved into the tiny, steel cell at the rear of the one-man prison rocket, and the Air Cop went forward to the controls. A moment later Randall

heard the thrumming roar of the rockets and felt their thrust. The air whined and screamed around the tiny ship, then subsided to a shrill whispering. And Randall knew they had reached the stratosphere.

He was filled with sudden envy. There was power! And speed! But it was power and speed reserved for the exclusive use of the Air Chief and his men. Those rockets must be atomic, as it was rumored they were. Anyway, they were infinitely better than the crude, tricky hydrogen-oxygen rockets that the rest of the world used. And even those had been given to the world by the first predecessor of the present half-legendary, but very real ruling force that was called the Air Chief.

Randall wondered at the genius of that man of a hundred years ago who had in one short year created these powerful atomic rockets, subdued all the nations of the world with his strange, invincible weapons, then started the construction of his vast city of Yss in central Asia. Only when the city was completed and his overlordship of the earth secure, had the Air Chief given the world the inferior rocketships and a thousand other equally harmless advantages to knit the world into one gigantic whole.

Randall differed radically with those who fought the Air Chief, as did the Irredentists. He realized fully the international anarchy that had preceded the Air Chief’s coming. Even a despotic international rule was better than none at all, he maintained. But riding rockets like these and realizing that he could never be at the controls of such a ship, was almost enough to make a flagwaving, speech-making nationalist out of the most peaceful rocketman in the world. With these rockets nothing would be impossible. The moon would be easy! Then Mars and Venus! Then Mercury, the Asteroids, and the Moons of Jupiter! And after those . . .

FOR an hour he listened to the half-heard, halffelt roaring song of the rockets, and longing and envy filled his being. He even forgot the dangers of his own position. Then the rockets stuttered, the song shifted to the forepart of the ship, and jolted the ship strongly. The shrill whispering of the thin air rose to a scream and Randall knew they were descending.

The plane shuddered again to the fore-rockets, then the keel jets wracked the ship, then abruptly the ship was still and silent. Randall wished that there was a window to his cell so he could see where they had landed.

A moment later the wish proved unnecessary. The door of the cell opened and his captor motioned for him to come out. Randall stepped out into the bright sunlight, and was numbly aware that it had been night in New York when he had been taken.

He stared around as two guards stepped forward to take positions at his sides. He marveled at the slender spires of the buildings, the thronged streets, flashing aircraft. And he knew he was in the forbidden city, Yss.

They hurried him across the roof to the elevators, and started down at such a speed that Randall’s stomach hadn’t more than time enough for one good flip-flop, then his knees were buckling with the deceleration. They led him to a somberly quiet part of the building that Randall took for a hospital, and they halted at a desk. One of the guards spoke briefly with the girl. She looked curiously at Randall.

“I’ll tell Dr. Brophy immediately,” she said, rising and going into an inner office.

When she returned, she stood to one side and motioned for them to enter. Randall and his guards went into the inner office and found themselves confronted by four men—two of them were hospital orderlies who moved forward to take charge of Randall. One of the two older men dismissed the guards, then turned to his companion with a smile.

“Well? . . . What do you think of him, Torvald?”

Torvald was eyeing Randall with critical eyes. “We could have done better,” he said unenthusiastically.

“You’re wrong,” argued the one Randall thought to be Brophy. “We can tattoo this fellow’s brown eyes blue, raise the hairline, remold the face a bit—all superficial work. The important thing is that, according to his registration, this man’s skeletal structure, and especially the skull, is the counterpart of the—the other’s. Of course, Randall’s nose seems to have taken a turn for the worse, but we can fix that easily enough.”

Torvald shrugged. “I think we could have done better,” he maintained.

Randall tried to ease himself out of the orderlies’ grips, but they weren’t to be taken by surprise. And they being big and husky, Randall was sure that a struggle would be useless. He faced the two older men.

“What’s this all about?” he demanded.

Neither of them deigned to answer, but Dr. Brophy gestured to the orderlies to take him away. As though by prearrangement, they hustled him out of the room and to a gleaming operating theater. They lifted him helplessly into the air, then strapped him to the operating table. After checking carefully, they left without a word.

RANDALL lay motionless on the table, unable to move even his head. A padded metal clamp clutched the sides of his cranium securely. He could only stare up at the bunched lights above him and wonder what would come next. Though it was probably only minutes, it seemed hours before Brophy and Torvald came. Brophy was still arguing with his companion.

“It will work, I tell you,” Brophy insisted. “I have done it before, and this time by using my Gen-Rays to facilitate healing, it will be simple. You are new here. That is your trouble. You can’t realize that we mean it when we say we are centuries ahead of the outside world. Have you got that negative?”

Torvald gave him a flat folder. Stem took out a negative and fastened it in a bracket so that it covered completely the mouth of a radiation machine. Satisfied, he turned to Torvald.

“You seem to think that the transference, itself, is the most wonderful and unbelievable part. That is merely a very refined technique. We have been doing that for a century. The Air Chief himself first taught us that. But my Gen-Ray! That is mine! It takes surgery away from the sciences and makes it an art. The negative allows the rays to strike the living flesh in varying strengths, and under the rays the flesh molds itself.”

Torvald looked doubtful. “Possibly,” he said.

Brophy snorted. “Small minds from the outer world,” he commented. “Only we here in Yss have the bravery and science to really delve into the unknown. Well, first we’ll have to break this

ellow’s nose and set it right. You administer the anaesthetic.”

“Say, for God’s sake! Tell me what you’re going to do!” Randall pleaded, rolling his eyes to look at them in turn.

Brophy smiled shrewdly. “You are a fretful person,” he commented dryly. “Millions of people would like to be in your position and know that their body was destined to rule the world.”

“My body? What about my brain?” Something in the doctor’s words sent a chill through Randall.

Dr. Brophy shrugged slightly. “It shall be replaced with a much better one,” he comforted.

“But what about me?”

Brophy shrugged again. “Your brain will have to be destroyed. The Air Chief cannot have a former tenant of the body he is using walking around alive. It wouldn’t be proper, and besides, there won’t be any body for you if it were. The one the Air Chief has at present is just about worn out. He wears them ragged in ten years. Then we have to find another for him and attend to the brain transference. The anaesthetic, Torvald.”

“Do you mean,” asked Randall quickly, “that it has been done before?”

“Certainly. The Air Chief himself is the one who taught us.”

“Then the man who conquered the earth is the one who rules it now?”

“Yes,” Brophy agreed, fussing with the radiation machine. “Torvald!” he snapped annoyedly. “The anaesthetic! I can’t work while he is chattering.”

Randall struggled to loose his head from the clamp, to keep his face out of the mask. He felt as though he had been caught in the cogs of a great machine and that it was dragging him irresistibly to destruction. It was nightmarish! He was powerless to escape. The mask descended over his mouth and nose and the anaesthetic blanked out his consciousness like a candle flame in the wind.

A

quoted Bob Sanderson, as we stood  LAS, poor Yorick. I knew him well,”

with a group of fellow students gazing at the grinning ghastly thing of bones. It had arrived at the studio that morning and was already mounted in its corner terribly still, it stood, and with an air of serene dignity. But it might have shrieked through its clenched teeth, so compelling was its presence.

I sought the eyes desperately as a man does when he is shaken and needs assurance or understanding. Empty sockets! Unbelievable that inert cavities could hold such an expression of sardonic misery! I cringed before them. Eyes that were more hideous for not being there at all!

And there was that incongruous, eternal grin that seemed to say: “Look at me. Once I was like you, fellows. Once I could join in your merry banter and gossip o’ mornings. I, too, stood working before a clay figure, pressing, molding, making beauty with my hands. Poor mortal hands that found courage to fashion imperishable things, when they themselves must come to this decay. Andrews, my pal and confidant, why do you stare at them so? Why don’t you clasp them as you used to in your morning greeting?”

I stepped forward under the spell of an anguished memory to grasp those fearful, bony joints and recoiled, chilled with horror.

“But why?” The relentless grin seemed to say when I looked up again. “They used to warm your heart and set your day right.

Yours, too, will be like this, some day——”

Involuntarily, I looked at my own  hands and shuddered.

“Andy!” A voice startled me, soft-spoken as

it had been, and I turned to Bob, who had called me. He, too, had stood staring a long moment, after quoting the Melancholy Dane, and as I looked into his darkened eyes under the familiar scowl, I knew he had meant no derision.

“Come away, old fellow,” he said. “This- this thing is getting us. Mustn’t be maudlin, but damned if I want any work and its consequent study of anatomy to make me as cold-blooded as some of the fellows here.

“Did you hear them jesting’ and making clever, derisive quips about life, inspired by that poor thing? Damn it, Andy, I knew that men of science, doctors, sculptors and the rest, get so familiar with our mortal machines that they have no illusions about the so-called souls that go with them. Atheists in their hearts, to the last man! It’s not for me to say whether that’s a blind spot from too much looking; but until they’re able to give me better proof of where consciousness goes when it leaves the body even temporarily, I’ll be

on the fence—with a periscope.”

E

 

VEN if I felt as sure as they do that this is all that’s left of poor Novello,” I rejoined, “wouldn’t that be all the more reason for respecting the one thing about him that does live—our memories ?”

“False courage, Andy,” Bob came back at me. “That remnant there is our common destiny, and since its irrevocable it isn’t pretty to think about. Bitterness, even clever bitterness, in the face of that, is only the frenzied bewilderment of half-cowards before an unconquerable foe. The desperate kitten spitting at a police dog. Courage? Of a kind, yes; but it only makes you laugh, doesn’t it? I’m not especially courageous, Andy, but I’m a stingy cuss, and I hate to give my reaper a laugh,” he ended.

Novello, a promising young Italian student had worked, chatted, laughed and smoked with us but a few months ago, and now this was all——

We had liked and admired him for his genial nature and his unmistakable talent, but mostly for his courage. Unlike the majority of us who had good homes and some means, Novello had had no close relatives, had lived alone and slaved doggedly at most anything between school hours to eke out a living and continue the work he loved. With half the chances for happiness, and twice the discouragements that we had, he had never been in an ugly mood. A thoroughly likeable fellow.

Pretty little Patricia Herron, youngest daughter of old Colonel Herron, the most popular girl in the class, had singled him out when she could have had any of us. But we had been glad anyhow; at least, Bob and I knew he was in love with her—in a hopeless sort of way.

He rarely came to any of our parties. He had to work and couldn’t afford to. So Pat usually came with Harlan Ware, who had pursued her clownishly in spite of her aloofness ever since she had entered the class.

However, on one occasion Novello had joined us late and unexpectedly, to find Pat draped in a velvet portiere and a silk lamp-shade set rakishly on her bobbed head, preparing with a couple of masculine confederates wearing impromptu whiskers and protruding with pillows, to burlesque a scene from a current revival of a popular operetta. He had seated himself at the piano without stopping to remove his coat and played from memory the opening and accompanying score. Then, when Pat was wrestling vocally with her bewhiskered abductors, he had surprised us all by picking up the cue of the banished lover and coming to her rescue with mock gallantry and a rich baritone voice. After much laughter and loud applause, the rest had amused themselves with other things, but Pat and Novello had gone back to the piano together. They sat, singing softly to themselves the strains of half forgotten melodies, until Harlan with ill-concealed bad humor came to claim Pat for a dance and then took her home.

During the following weeks, Pat and Novello lunched frequently together and Harlan consoled himself with mutterings about “Wops.”

Four months later, Novello had been taken seriously ill and had been told he required an immediate operation. Knowing of his perilous condition, and that he hadn’t the necessary funds, Bob and I had called a class meeting and collected among us more than a sufficient sum to carry him through.

When I went to the hospital to tell him this, he protested at first and then in his quiet way he grasped my hand, tears came to his eyes and he turned his face to the wall.

Well—poor Novello never came through. Four of us fellows had spent the whole morning at the hospital. After the news came, we trudged slowly back to school without saying a word. He had been a real friend, and we felt his loss keenly.

The next day we learned that when Novello had known he was dying despite all that had been done for him, he had requested through his physician that his skeleton be given to the studio he had attended. He explained that he had once heard Professor Kalin say he desired the class to have one.

Whether he did this as a last act of gratitude, or whether he couldn’t bear to leave the place he had loved, and felt that in this way he could be with us still, I don’t know.

But—there it was. God, I was glad Pat wasn’t present! She had been grieved, stunned by his death and had gone to Europe with her mother shortly afterwards. I decided to inform her of the strange bequest as soon as she returned, for I wanted to spare her coming back to the studio without knowing what would greet her there. It would be hard enough for her without such a shock.

B

 

UT it is strange how intimacies and friendships are forgotten like dreams when they are no longer part of us. After a few months, the studio seemed quite the same, and most of the boys with the exception of Bob and myself could come into the room without a quick look to that corner and its ever-present reminder.

Pat stayed in Europe longer than we had expected, and it was almost a year after Novello’s death that I heard from her at home. She phoned that she was driving in from Long Island where she lived, and would drop by school for me at luncheon time if I wanted her to. Of course, I would be delighted to see her, and then I remembered too, the thing I must tell her.

I was waiting for Pat at the door when she drove up. We lunched at a little tea room around the corner and Pat had six escorts instead of one. For the rest of the students coming out at lunch time had recognized her car and insisted on joining us. Pat seemed quite her merry self again. I wondered how I would warn her about the thing in the studio for I feared she might return there with us and get a bad shock.

On the way back, I insisted upon walking alone with Pat. Sympathetically as I had hoped to put it, I fear I was very blunt. Her eyes filled with tears, but she pressed my hand and said: “Thanks, Andy, a lot, I understand.” As the rest of the group came up, she raised her head, smiled quickly and I don’t think they could have noticed any difference in her manner. She chatted gaily at the door, but refused to come up to the studio, pleading that she had other engagements and must hurry away.

 

WAS putting her in the roadster when Harlan

Ware, who had just heard of Pat’s return, came down. He rushed over to take her hands. At that moment, I felt sorry for him, for I knew he had missed Pat terribly. He pleaded to join her for a little spin, that they might talk, and they drove away together.

We saw Pat quite a lot during the next few weeks at luncheons and parties. But she never came back to the studio, although Harlan tried to persuade her several times, saying her refusal was “blamed nonsense.”

It was the second week in June, and the class was already in a flutter of anticipation about the annual class banquet set for the last Thursday of the month. This event always caused considerable excitement among us, for it was held in the studio and only for class members. There was something about coming back to a familiar scene of toil in holiday attire and bent only on pleasure that lent an atmosphere to the evening.

Two days before the party, Harlan Ware announced that Pat had consented to attend with him. We were surprised at her final decision but we were enthusiastic about it, for we had missed her and we remembered what a big part she had been of the two previous annuals.

Well, the evening had finally arrived, after a lackadaisical day at school, during which little work had been done while we gathered in groups and chattered about the possibilities of the evening.

Most of the gang had come early and in high spirits. “Chubby” Collins had started off the evening with his three impersonations, rendered to shouts of laughter although the crowd had seen them many times. Pretty Maybelle Fenton was ensconced becomingly in the window seat, strumming a uke, while four of the boys hovered over her, harmonizing extravagantly on moonlight melodies. There was little Sally Folsom, a la John Held, Jr., perched atop the piano, with a cigarette in one hand and a cocktail in the other. Clever little girl, Sally, but you had to watch her drinks.

Someone had suggested dancing, and after a few turns I had gone downstairs with a couple of the boys for a smoke. When I came back, I saw Bob making the rounds as though looking for someone, and I went over to join him.

“Haven’t seen Pat and Harlan, have you?” he asked. I looked at my watch and was surprised to find it was almost eleven o’clock. And no sign of Harlan and Pat! We made inquiries from some of the rest, but no one had seen Harlan since school hours when he had promised to be there early and “with a pink ribbon in his hair.” He had confided to a few of the boys that he meant to ask Pat a very important question that night and had gone home in a high mood.

T

 

HE dancing and hilarity had lulled for a while and capable Betty Lindsey was busying herself with seating arrangements at the table when Harlan walked in alone.

Two of the girls ran up, to ask excitedly what he had done with his charge. He replied shortly: “Pat had a headache. Didn’t feel she should come.” His voice was calm, but his face was flushed and I knew he was furiously angry at what he called Pat’s “blamed nonsense.” Angry and jealous—of a memory!

“Chubby” mixed him a drink, then commandeering Les Corbin for a steed, he rode up in state to deliver it. Harlan laughed at this and seemed to be regaining his composure, but he became sullen again at the table. I sat opposite him and noticed that he was punishing the wine steadily. He had already had enough to make him drop the mask of amused interest he had worn earlier at supper, and he no longer laughed at the clever things little Sally Folsom on his left cooed in his ear. He was scowling fiercely in the direction of the corner. I realized this with a shock. I don’t think anyone else had noticed it, for there was much gaiety and laughter about the table.

Then suddenly he rose, strode over to the corner, took the poor thing of bones down, carried it back and say it in a chair at the head of the table. It was all done so quickly that some of the crowd had not seen it until it was seated there. Three of the girls shrieked and ran from the table. It did look grotesque—this grinning, ghastly thing at the head of a banquet table, with a bony hand at either side of its plate.

I pushed back my chair and stared at Harlan, wondering if he had suddenly gone mad, There was a diabolical expression of vengeance and jealousy in his bloodshot eyes and his mouth was twisted cruelly. He was pouring drinks for those nearest him, for himself, and for the thing of bones! With a gesture, he raised his glass to the stark jaws, and adding to the already incredibly gruesome scene, he began in a voice that seemed to choke and rattle deep down in his throat:

“Look at him, fellows! My lucky rival! Drink, drink to him, boys! He wins—with a heart turned to dust! Damn you, Novello! I tried to bring her here tonight—to show her how you’ve changed. You haven’t, to her—that’s the way with women—they shut their eyes to see! Damn your grinning pack of bones! Why don’t you laugh ? Laugh aloud ! You’ve beaten me, haven’t you ? You win! You win, damn you ! Here’s—here’s— to you !” He finished brokenly, as he picked up the wine he had poured for the thing and flung it through the grinning teeth. Then with one movement he gulped his own drink and fell back sobbing in his chair, his head in his arms on the table.

Then “Chubby” strolled back into the studio and slammed the door.

I got up to follow him, but Harlan stopped me at the door. “Stay with me, won’t you, Andrews?” He shuddered, He was sitting on the edge of the couch, digging his fingers through his hair. He did look done-up, poor devil.

“All right,” I replied. “Turn in. I’ll be with you in a minute.”

I stepped into the studio, but everybody had gone—even “Chubby,” with whom I had wanted to have a few words. How deserted the place looked! I certainly wasn’t going to linger long here. I lighted a cigarette and sat down at the far end of the room, with my back to the table for a few quick puffs.

When I had finished smoking-, I walked over to the wall switch near the door to turn out the lights. Might as well leave things as they were until morning, I thought. I’ll go to bed now.

I turned the switch, the lights went out and my heart almost stopped beating! Good God, what was that fluttering, reddish glow behind me, over my shoulder! I was paralyzed for the moment and afraid to turn around, for I remembered too well the thing sitting at the table. Suppose those tales one heard were true? Suppose poor Novello’s spirit——Well, I couldn’t stand here all night. Slowly, half leaning against the door, I turned to look. Boy, what a relief! With a sigh and a little chuckle, I relaxed against the door. A good laugh for the fellows tomorrow. What an old woman I was getting to be. Afraid of my own shadow— might as well be that way, as to be afraid of the glow of a few almost burned-out candles sputtering in a dark room. The candles on the table, of course. I’d forgotten all about them.

I opened my eyes and looked again. I stared—for I was fascinated by the gruesome beauty of that fantastic scene. The flicker of almost exhausted candles casting an eerie, wavering light on the deserted banquet table in the great dark studio—the only remaining guest, that thing of bones at the head of the table. That grinning, ghastly thing with its unearthly expression of misery and mockery. Little lights and shadows that chased themselves across the hideous face and almost made it seem animated—

Maybe I was going mad, standing here staring so long at that thing—I made an effort to pull myself together, walked quickly to the table, extinguished the candles and went in to rejoin

Harlan,

W

 

HEN I awakened the next morning, Harlan was already dressed and reclining in an easy chair. His eyes were closed wearily, as though he had not yet had enough sleep.

“Morning, Ware,” I called. “How’s the head?”

“Glad you’re awake, Andrews,” he replied. “I am bad company for myself this morning, On top of knowing that I made a damned ass of myself last night, I’ve had a most horrible nightmare that hangs on like a leech. Can’t seem to shake it off, even now when I’m wide awake. Serves me right, of course, after what I did last night. What do you suppose possessed me, Andy?

Can’t excuse myself on so few drinks. And that hellish dream! Got to tell it to you, Andrews, even though it’s silly as the deuce; then maybe I can forget it.”

He glanced up shamefacedly to see if I was listening as he continued: “The whole thing started out of a great glare of light that almost blinded me at first and which I realized afterwards was the headlights of a car. A speeding car, coming toward me, which for no reason filled me with great glee. Then I became conscious that it was Pat’s car, and there was Pat speeding toward me—toward all of us, as fast as she could. She was coming to the party, of course. As I ran down the long, dark road to meet her, waving my arms and shouting greetings, I saw something white in the seat beside her. Then, as the car drew nearer, it became—that thing in there!” He nodded toward the studio, as he covered his eyes.

“Then I could see Pat’s face, and it was no longer smiling as she grappled desperately with the thing that had its long, bony hands on the steering wheel and was turning it against Pat’s strength toward the steep, dark embankment at one side of the road. Terror-stricken, I tried to run to help her, but I couldn’t move an inch! You can’t imagine the horror that gripped me as I stood there in, the dark road, unable to move, while that thing battled with Pat over the wheel, swerving the speeding car dangerously from side to side of the road, getting nearer and nearer the embankment until, with a great crash of broken glass and a shriek from Pat, they plunged over into the darkness below. Then I woke up.

 

E had been so stunned by this horrible finale to our dinner that I don’t think anyone moved until Sally Folsom’s hysterical giggle broke the spell. There followed a few moments of excited discussion, mostly in monotones, while some of the boys admonished Harlan to “buck up,” while others winked and talked about “his having had too much.” The girls had gone for their wraps, since now it seemed impossible to resume frivolities.

There was a small but comfortable ante-room off the studio that Professor Kalin had allowed the boys to fit up for use during the winter months, and we had often taken turns at spending the night there when we wanted to work late or get an early morning start on some particularly interesting subject. It had been good-natured “Chubby” Collins’ for that weekend, but he took Harlan there and offered it to him in embarrassed sympathy;

“Go to bed, you sap, and get some shut-eye. That’s what you need. I gotta take Betty home.”

“Terrible, wasn’t it? Gave me such a nasty twist, I can’t get it out of my mind. Well, it’s only seven o’clock, Andy,” he concluded. “Shall we go out for a little cool morning air, before we have breakfast and brighten up the place?”

We were about ready to leave when Bob came in.

“How do you happen to be up so early ?” he asked. “Have you heard, too?”

“Heard what?” I asked quickly.

A

 

BOUT Pat,” he answered, and I saw

Harlan start and clench his teeth, “they found her at the bottom of that embankment near Merrick’s corner this morning in her wrecked car—dead ! Her mother called me about a half an hour before they found her. She asked if I knew where she had gone for the night. She said Pat had decided suddenly around eleven o’clock last night that she had behaved foolishly about refusing to go to the party and had climbed into her roadster, chuckling over the surprise she would give us when she walked in time for the banquet. Her mother seemed to have a premonition of what would happen for she said it had been drizzling when Pat left and she had cautioned her against driving too fast on the slippery road. I—I hadn’t the heart to tell her we hadn’t seen Pat. I was afraid, too, so I dressed and went out—but they had discovered her body. Poor little Pat,” he finished with a sigh.

 

Harlan had slumped into a chair and sat staring into space. I motioned Bob to follow me into the studio, and without a word we took the thing of bones and replaced it in its corner. As we turned away, I noticed a strand of hair caught in the bony fingers of the left hand!

“Probably Sally’s—last night,” Bob said, “She was nearest, wasn’t she?” I didn’t answer but I felt cold all over as I walked away.

I have never told anyone of the dream Harlan so vividly related to me that morning. I’d merely be thought an impressionable fool if I did, I guess.

To the rest of the world, Pat was just a member of the reckless younger generation, speeding in typical fashion on a slippery night road to join a party of waiting friends and ending disastrously at the bottom of a cliff. Too bad, but quite a natural denouement these days!

Call me superstitious if you will, but I can’t think of the affair without having grave doubts as to its natural conclusion.

If spirits do live on, in that vague place we call the Borderland, retaining their earthly personalities, then they must indeed retain their earthly emotions as well.

Novello had loved Pat. Can death change that? Since Pat continued to love his memory, was he not, as Harlan had said, still the lucky rival ?

But he was a rival unable to defend his mortal memory from the blasphemous and unsportsmanlike treatment to which it had been subjected! Suppose this fact had taunted him into contemplating an interrupted victory—into taking Pat across the misty frontier that had intercepted their love?

Who knows?