asleep by his charge. The swelling on the left had broken, and just such another head was there miauling and spluttering. Etcham woke up and the three of us stood there and glared. Stone interjected hoarse vocables into the tinkling gurgle of the portent's utterance.
Van Rieten stepped forward, took up Stone's razor and knelt down by the cot. The atomy of a head squealed a wheezy snarl at him.
Then suddenly Stone spoke English. “Who are you with my razor?”
Van Rieten started back and stood up. Stone's eyes were clear now and bright, they roved about the hut.
“The end,” he said; “I recognize the end. I seem to see Etcham, as if in life. But Singleton! Ah, Singleton! Ghosts of my boyhood come to watch me pass! And you, strange specter with the black beard, and my razor! Aroint ye all!”
“I'm no ghost, Stone,” I managed to say. “I'm alive. So are Etcham and Van Rieten. We are here to help you.”
“Van Rieten!” he exclaimed. “My work passes on to a better man. Luck go with you, Van Rieten.”
Van Rieten went nearer to him.
“Just hold still a moment, old man,” he said soothingly. “It will be only one twinge.”
“I've held still for many such twinges,” Stone answered quite distinctly. “Let me be. Let me die my own way. The hydra was nothing to this. You can cut off ten, a hundred, a thousand heads, but the curse you can not cut off, or take off. What's soaked into the bone won't come out of the flesh, any more than what's bred there. Don't hack me any more. Promise!”
His voice had all the old commanding tone of his boyhood and it swayed Van Rieten as it always had swayed everybody.
“I promise,” said Van Rieten.
Almost as he said the word Stone's eyes filmed again. Then we three sat about Stone and watched that hideous, gibbering prodigy grow up out of Stone s flesh, till two horrid, spindling little black arms disengaged themselves. The infinitesimal nails were perfect to the barely perceptible moon at the quick, the pink spot on the palm was horridly natural. These arms gesticulated and the right plucked toward Stone's blond beard.
“I can't stand this,” Van Rieten exclaimed and took up the razor again. Instantly Stone's eyes opened, hard and glittering.
“Van Rieten break his word?” he enunciated slowly. “Never!”
“But we must help you,” Van Rieten gasped.
“I am past all help and all hurting,” said Stone. “This is my hour. This curse is not put on me; it grew out of me, like this horror here. Even now I go.”
His eyes closed and we stood helpless, the adherent figure spouting shrill sentences. In a moment Stone spoke again.
“You speak all tongues?” he asked thickly.
And the emergent minikin replied in sudden English:
“Yea, verily, all that you speak,” putting out its microscopic tongue, writhing its lips and wagging its head from side to side. We could see the thready ribs on its exiguous flanks heave as if the thing breathed.
“Has she forgiven me?” Stone asked in a muffled strangle. “Not while the moss hangs from the cypresses,” the head squeaked. “Not while the stars shine on Lake Pontchartrain will she forgive.”
And then Stone, all with one motion, wrenched himself over on his side. The next instant he was dead.
When Singleton's voice ceased the room was hushed for a space. We could hear each other breathing. Twombly, the tactless, broke the silence.
“I presume,” he said, “you cut off the little minikin and brought it home in alcohol.” Singleton turned on him a stern countenance.
“We buried Stone,” he said, “unmutilated as he died.”
“But,” said the unconscionable Twombly, “the whole thing is incredible.” Singleton stiffened.
“I did not expect you to believe it,” he said; “I began by saying that although I heard and saw it, when I look back on it I cannot credit it myself.”
The Picture Puzzle
Of course the instinct of the police and detectives was to run down their game. That was natural. They seemed astonished and contemptuous when I urged that all I wanted was my baby; whether the kidnappers were ever caught or not made no difference to me. They kept arguing that unless precautions were taken the criminals would escape and I kept arguing that if they became suspicious of a trap they would keep away and my only chance to recover our little girl would be gone forever. They finally agreed and I believe they kept their promise to me. Helen always felt the other way and maintained that their watchers frightened off whoever was to meet me. Anyhow I waited in vain, waited for hours, waited again the next day and the next and the next. We put advertisements in countless papers, offering rewards and immunity, but never heard anything more.
I pulled myself together in a sort of a way and tried to do my work. My partner and clerks were very kind. I don't believe I ever did anything properly in those days, but no one ever brought any blunder to my attention. If they came across any they set it right for me. And at the office it was not so bad. Trying to work was good for me. It was worse at home and worse at night. I slept hardly at all.
Helen, if possible, slept less than I. And she had terrible spasms of sobs that shook the bed. She would try to choke them down, thinking I was asleep and she might wake me. But she never went through a night without at least one frightful paroxysm of tears.
In the daylight she controlled herself better, made a heart-breaking and yet heart-warming effort at her normal cheeriness over the breakfast things, and greeted me beautifully when I came home. But the moment we were alone for the evening she would break down.
I don't know how many days that sort of thing kept up. I sympathized in silence. It was Helen herself who suggested that we must force ourselves to be diverted, somehow. The theater was out of the question. Not merely the sight of a four-year-old girl with yellow locks threw Helen into a passion of uncontrollable sobbing, but all sorts of unexpected trifles reminded her of Amy and affected her almost as much. Confined to our home we tried cards, chess and everything else we could think of. They helped her as little as they helped me.
Then one afternoon Helen did not come to greet me. Instead as I came in I heard her call, quite in her natural voice.
“Oh, I'm so glad that is you. Come and help me.” I found her seated at the library table, her back to the door. She had on a pink wrapper and her shoulders had no despondent droop, but a girlish alertness. She barely turned her head as I entered, but her profile showed no signs of recent weeping. Her face was its natural color.
“Come and help me,” she repeated. “I can't find the other piece of the boat.” She was absorbed, positively absorbed in a picture puzzle.
In forty seconds I was absorbed too. It must have been six minutes before we identified the last piece of the boat. And then we went on with the sky and were still at it when the butler announced dinner.
“Where did you get it?” I asked, over the soup, which Helen really ate.
“Mrs. Allstone brought it,” Helen replied, “just before lunch.” I blessed Mrs. Allstone.
Really it seems absurd, but those idiotic jig-saw puzzles were our salvation. They actually took our minds off everything else. At first I dreaded finishing one. No sooner was the last piece in place than I felt a sudden revulsion, a booming of blood in my ears, and the sense of loss and misery rushed over me like a wave of scalding water. And I knew it was worse for Helen.
But after some days each seemed not merely a respite from pain, but a sedative as well. After a two hours' struggle with a fascinating tangle of shapes and colors, we seemed numb to our bereavement and the bitterness of the smart seemed blunted.
We grew fastidious as to manufacture and finish; learned to avoid crude and clumsy products as bores; developed a pronounced taste for pictures neither too soft nor too plain in color-masses; and became Connoisseurs
