Weird Tales, Volume 1, Number 2, April, 1923: The unique magazine

The policeman’s big shoulders began straining, rhythmically.

“All together,” he directed. “Take it easy. Pull when I do.”

Slowly, the rope passed through our hands. With each fresh grip that we took, a small section of it dropped to the floor behind us. I began to feel the strain. I could tell from the coroner’s labored breathing that he felt it more, being an old man. The policeman, however, seemed untiring.

The rope tightened, suddenly, and there was an ejaculation from below—just below. Still holding fast, the policeman contrived to stoop over and look. He translated the ejaculation for us.

“Let down a little. He’s stuck with it against the side.”

We slackened the rope, until the detective’s voice gave us the word again.

The rhythmic tugging continued. Something dark appeared, quite abruptly, at the top of the hole. My nerves leapt in spite of me, but it was merely the top of the detective’s head—his dark hair. Something white came next—his pale face, with staring eyes. Then his shoulders, bowed forward, the better to support what was in his arms. Then——

I looked away; but, as he laid his burden down at the side of the well, the detective whispered to us:

“He had her covered up with dirt—covered up....”

He began to laugh—a little, high cackle, like a child’s—until the coroner took him by the shoulders and deliberately shook him. Then the policeman led him out of the cellar.

* * * * *

It was not then, but afterward, that I put my question to the coroner.

“Tell me,” I demanded. “People pass there at all hours. Why didn’t my uncle call for help?”

“I have thought of that,” he replied. “I believe he did call. I think, probably, he screamed. But his head was down, and he couldn’t raise it. His screams must have been swallowed up in the well.”

“You are sure he didn’t murder her?” He had given me that assurance before, but I wished it again.

“Almost sure,” he declared. “Though it was on his account, undoubtedly, that she killed herself. Few of us are punished as accurately for our sins as he was.”

* * * * *

One should be thankful, even for crumbs of comfort. I am thankful.

But there are times when my uncle’s face rises before me. After all, we were the same blood; our sympathies had much in common; under any given circumstances, our thoughts and feelings must have been largely the same. I seem to see him in that final death march along the unlighted passageway—obeying an imperative summons—going on, step by step—down the stairway to the first floor, down the cellar stairs—at last, lifting the slab.

I try not to think of the final expiation. Yet _was_ it final? I wonder. Did the last Door of all, when it opened, find him willing to pass through? Or was Something waiting beyond that Door?

Murderous Sheik Flees to Forest

After attempting to kill a woman who scorned his attentions, Mohammed Ben Asmen, a Moroccan sheik, fled to the Argenteuil Forest near Paris and there defied the efforts of the police to capture him. When the sheik first saw the beautiful Mme. Sophie Bolle he was smitten, and he followed her to her home and demanded that she leave her husband and flee with him. She ordered him away, whereon he attempted to kill her. He was frightened away, but returned and again tried to slay her. Then the police were called, but he eluded them in the forest.

_The Tortoise Shell Comb_

The Fantasy of a Mad Brain

By ROYLSTON MARKHAM

“Well, the ghosts of the men hung at Is-Sur-Tille have company. For myself, I wouldn’t even want a photograph of the place. No, sir, not me. I can remember it without that. That’s why they’ve put me in this hospital with all these crazy people. Yet a tortoise shell comb is as good an alibi as any....

“What? Ghosts? No sir, of course not; I don’t believe in ’em, not on _this_ side of the Atlantic ... who ever told you _I_ believed in ghosts.

“The hospital intern?... If they’d kept me ’round that chateau in the woods at Is-Sur-Tille, it might ’a’ been different. It had a queer story about it, that chateau. That’s what set _me_ off; that and the fact that I never did like Captain Bott.

“He was hardboiled, that guy was. No, sir; he didn’t own that French chateau, although at one time he acted as though he thought he did.... I’m coming to that.

“Over there the frogs said the original owner of the place, in his youth, had fallen madly in love with a young girl and married her. He must ’a’ been crazy about her all right because, according to their story, he often was seen combing her hair—yes, sir, the French folks are like that; that’s romance—combing her long red hair as it hung over the back of her chair, touching the floor.

“I particularly remember that they said her hair was long, very long, and red, like copper is red in candle light. After a year, she died, suddenly, of heart disease—‘killed by love itself,’ one of the frogs said; that’s romance, and he, her husband, the owner of that chateau there in the woods at Is-Sur-Tille, left that part of the country on the very day of her funeral. The place, probably, is there yet, like it was when I saw it, late in the summer of 1918.

“The house was set back from the road among the trees. It looked, then, as though it had been deserted for a long time. Most of the furniture had been removed from it, except in one room—I’m coming to that—and the gate leading into the yard had fallen open on one rusty hinge. Grass filled the paths; and you couldn’t tell the flowerbeds from the lawns except by the weeds.

“Nobody had used the place, even in wartime, until our outfit was billeted at Is-Sur-Tille. That ghost story of a dead bride begging some one to comb her hair had kept the Frenchies off the place. But Captain Bott was a hard-boiled guy.

“We went into the house late one afternoon, Captain Bott and me. He led the way into the kitchen and through the first floor into a large hall, where the stairs went up to the floor above. Dust was over everything. The only room in the house that looked at all as though it had been occupied in years was that bedroom upstairs where, they had told us, the bride had slept and died. We recognized it because it was the only room in the house where the door was shut.

“We opened it—that is, Captain Bott did—and went in. I stood in the doorway until he swore at me and ordered me to follow him in. The room smelled moldy. It smelled dead. It was a fine room for a ghost. It was dark in there, but gradually my eyes got accustomed to the gloom enough to make out that there was a bed in it. On the captain’s orders, I went to the window to open it for light, but I had to break the rusty hinges of the outside shutters before I could loosen them.

“At the court martial inquiry they wouldn’t believe me when I said that was the only reason I went into the room, and on the captain’s orders.

“The room was on the north side of the house and the sun was setting, so opening the window didn’t help much. There was pillows and a mattress and sheets—yellow sheets, yellow with age—on the bed. The chairs seemed all in confusion. There was another door in the room, probably leading to a closet. It was closed.

“Captain Bott went over and felt of the mattress and patted the pillows—the pillows on which they had said the bride’s head, nestled in its mass of copper-colored hair, had rested when she died. Captain Bott was hard-boiled, like I just said. He didn’t believe in ghosts.

“He said it was the best shakedown he’d seen in weeks.

“‘I’ll damned soon get a good night’s rest,’ he said.

“And he ordered me to go for some candles and his stuff; and, when I got back, I was to clear the place up. I went. I was glad to go. But I hated like hell to return.”

* * * * *

“When I did get back into the house, it was twilight and, inside, as dark as a black cat’s belly. Downstairs, in the kitchen, I lighted one of the candles and held it before me in one hand, the other being occupied with the captain’s luggage. Then I went through the first floor into the large hall where the stairs went up to the floor above.

“In the light of my candle at the landing I saw that the door into the bedroom was closed again, as it had been the only room in the house where the door was shut when we first went up there together—the captain who didn’t believe in ghosts and I, who did, over there.... No sir, of course not; I _don’t_ believe in ’em, not on _this_ side of the Atlantic. But, in the woods, at Is-Sur-Tille at night, that’s different.

“And it must be worse, since they hung those men there ... and with Captain Bott who thought the bed of a dead bride was a handsome billet. He was sure hard-boiled, that guy. I hated him for it.

“When I left him to go for the candles, that door had been open. When I returned, it was closed. I didn’t like to open it again. But he was alone there in the dark in that bedroom. I knew that if I waited for him to come to open the door, stumbling across chairs and things, he sure would cuss me out—that’s the hell of being a private and a servant to an officer; no white man likes it—so, finally, I opened the door, with the hand which held the candle.

“Everything seemed as before, but so quiet. My ears were straining for sound like they used to do at the sudden cessation of barrage-firing. But I heard nothing, nothing at all. And the place smelled moldy. It smelled dead. It was a fine room for a ghost. I thought of it then.

“And, as I stepped across the threshold, I noticed that that other door in the room, probably that of a closet, was open. It had been closed. I thought perhaps that the captain had opened it while I was gone. It wasn’t so dark when I left him as when I returned, and maybe he would ’a’ been snooping around a bit, out of curiosity, perhaps. _I’m_ not curious like that. But Captain Bott was hard-boiled. And he didn’t believe in ghosts....

“All these things I’m telling you about what I saw and thought and felt, they wouldn’t hardly listen to at the court martial inquiry....

“I don’t know how long it was from the time I lighted the candle in the kitchen downstairs until I stood with it in the doorway of the bedroom of the dead bride. Not very long, probably, because the melting candle grease was just beginning to run hot onto my fingers when I turned to glance toward the bed, wondering why the captain had kept so damned quiet. It wasn’t like him.

“And there he was, lying across the bed on his back, the tips of his shoes just touching the floor. Asleep? No. I don’t know how I knew he wasn’t asleep ... the court martial inquiry kept asking me that....

“But I saw he had something wound round his neck, something that glinted in the candle light like the braid of a woman’s copper-red hair. And his hands were above his head. One of them clutched a tortoise-shell comb. I knew he wasn’t asleep. I knew he was _dead_!...

“How I knew, I couldn’t tell you nor any damned court martial inquiry on earth. God knows they drove me crazy enough asking me that and what else I saw....

“Didn’t I see nothing else? No, but I thought I _heard_ or _felt_ something move near that black hole where that other door opened yawning into a closet. My candle went out—maybe it was only the night wind from the window—and I dropped it. I dropped the bundle of things belonging to Captain Bott. I crossed the threshold. I went down the stairs in the dark, running.

“I fell at the bottom. I remember that.... And I told the court martial inquiry so; ’twas about the only thing those smug guys believed that I told them.... But I was on my feet and out of that house before I knew I had fallen....”

* * * * *

“Ha! I can see it! You, too, think I’m soft-boiled.... So did the court martial inquiry. That’s why they sent me here, among these crazy people. But say, Buddy, don’t believe what the hospital interne tells you. He’s crazy, like the rest of ’em. He’s as hard-boiled, too, as Captain Bott was. And _that_ guy was so hard-boiled he didn’t believe in French ghost stories.”

* * * * *

“That nut you just talked with tells his story to anyone who will listen,” the interne remarked casually, as we returned to the office of the commandant of the Army and Navy Insane Asylum. “Probably you think you’ve heard a crackin’ good ghost story, but what you really heard was the confession of a crazy murderer who ought to have been the third on the gallows at Is-Sur-Tille.”

“Isn’t there a haunted chateau at Is-Sur-Tille, and didn’t the officer he tells about die in the bedroom there?”

“_Oui, mais certainement!_ as the frogs have it. If that chateau isn’t haunted, it ought to be. There’s a story in the village of the bride’s death there. And Captain Bott died there all right enough. But that thing they found twined around his neck ‘like the braid of a woman’s copper-red hair’ was, in fact, real copper—copper wire stolen from a lineman’s kit. It might _look_ like hair to a crazy man.”

“But that comb?” I persisted. “What about that tortoise-shell comb?”

“That? Oh, the nut stole that, too. It belonged to one of the girls of the town whom the private knew before the captain beat his time with her.”

_A Photographic Phantasm_

_By Paul Crumpler, M. D._

I have always believed that there is a simple and natural explanation for all seemingly supernatural happenings; but I recently had occasion to question this belief.

I cannot doubt my own personal knowledge, nor can I deny what my own eyes have seen, therefore, I cannot dismiss it as a figment of imagination. The facts are as follows:

There is a rural section near me into which I frequently make visits in the practice of my profession as a physician. The people are a quaint, simple and kindly sort, honest, unsophisticated.

I was called, not long ago, to see a little girl in this neighborhood and found her very ill and with a poor chance for recovery. She was the younger of two children of a very intelligent farmer and his wife, the latter, however, having a rather nervous temperament. I had treated the woman before the little girl was born, and, although she, too, was above the average in intelligence in her neighborhood, she was a person who would be classed medically as a neurasthenic.

Realizing the seriousness of her child’s sickness, she was becoming very nervous, so much so that I found it necessary to leave her some sedatives. She was worrying a great deal because she did not have a picture of the little girl. It seemed that the family had planned on several occasions to have a group picture made in the village, but each time something had prevented their doing so. This, she informed me, was preying on her mind and accentuating her grief.

The child died and I heard nothing more from the family until about two months later. This time my call was to the mother. I found her in a state of hysteria bordering almost on insanity. She was holding a number of photographs to her breast, and alternately laughing and crying; it was impossible to get any coherency into her actions.

Her husband, however, told me that just before he sent for me, the Rural Mail Carrier had delivered the photographs which had been taken of himself, his wife and the remaining little girl about six weeks after the death of their child.

After much persuasion we were able to get the photographs from her and after glancing at them we saw the cause of her hysteria. THE DEAD CHILD WAS PHOTOGRAPHED IN THE GROUP ALMOST AS PLAINLY AS THE OTHERS.

She was sitting on her mother’s lap, and on her feet were the little white shoes which had been bought after her death to satisfy the mother, who did not want to bury the child in the old and ragged pair which were all she had. She was dressed exactly as when she was buried, wearing the dress that the mother had made for her to wear when the family group was to be photographed.

Did this phenomenon happen by mental telepathy from the mother to the camera? The mother had grieved unusually and her mind was entirely filled with thoughts of her child. If the explanation is not to be had from this line of reasoning, I am unable to solve it.

The picture is there, and also the photographer to verify the truth of this. The picture shows two children and the mother and father. The photographer is ready to swear that only one child was visible to his eye when he made the negative.

_One “Creepy” Night in a House of Death_

The Living Nightmare

By ANTON M. OLIVER

“You mean to tell me,” demanded Jim Brown, “that those people left town and expect you to stay in that house alone tonight?”

“Why, yes,” said MacMillen, preparing to leave. “They’ve gone to Virginia and will be back Thursday, when the funeral will take place.”

“And they left the body lying in the living-room?”

“Of course. Where did you expect them to leave it—on the porch?”

“And you are going to sleep in that house alone—with the corpse?”

“Yes. What of it? There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

Taking his hat and coat, MacMillen departed.

“Pleasant dreams!” called Brown, as the door slammed behind him.

The night was cold and the atmosphere was clear and “hard.” The snow crackled under his feet as he walked.

“Silly idea,” he muttered; but he couldn’t help wondering why the Mitchells, with whom he made his home, had left the house on the same day that Mrs. Mitchell’s grandmother had passed away.

In his mind he went over Mrs. Mitchell’s explanation. She had told him that they were going to Wheeling, the deceased lady’s old home, where a sister lived, and would remain there until the funeral. And she had asked, “You are not afraid to stay here alone, are you?”

No, of course, he was not afraid; but it was strange that they should leave the corpse in his charge and depart.

Then it came to him. Funny he hadn’t thought of it before. The Mitchells must be superstitious. They probably had some silly notion about a house being haunted while a corpse was in it, or something of that sort. That must be it. But how ridiculous!

Still, the Mitchells were a little queer anyway, reflected Mac, as he turned up the ice-covered path of the Mitchell residence.

It stood, surrounded by high buildings and stores, in a section of town which in days gone by had been the very heart of the city’s social life. It was one of the largest and oldest homes in the city. And now it was an outcast, so to say, among the monuments to industry and progress. Built years ago by the husband of the woman who now lay dead within its walls, it was in a style of architecture long since abandoned. Everything about it was high and narrow—the building itself, the windows and doors, the porch columns, and the roof high up among the tree branches.

Mac walked unhesitatingly toward the big dark house. But, somehow, the formidable brick walls that always looked so inviting seemed cold and inhospitable tonight. Strange shadows were playing in the windows.

He looked up at his own window. He didn’t exactly fancy the idea of going past the room where lay the dead woman, he admitted to himself, but he certainly was not afraid. Not he!

With grim resolution, he thrust the key, which he had taken from his pocket while coming up the walk, into the lock of the front door. The huge, glass-paneled door squeaked as he did so, and he was almost startled by his own reflection in the shining glass. He turned the key in its lock and threw the door wide open with unnecessary vigor.

A hot wave of air greeted him. The house was warm, surprisingly so, considering that it had been unoccupied all day. His heart, for some unexplainable reason, was beating rather fast as he entered the dark hall.

He turned sharply to the left and reached for the electric light switch. His hand had often turned that switch, had often found it instantly in the dark; but tonight he had to feel for it. He turned it once, twice—three times—_but the hall remained dark_.