* * *
The compressor wheezed and racketed. Mrs. Leighton swelled like a beachball. Her lungs became Straining blowfish.
* * *
Fiends! Devils' Dissemble no morel Here! Here! It is the beating of his hideous heart!
* * *
She seemed to explode all at once.
* * *
Sitting in a boilin hotel room in Bombay, Gerald re-wrote the story he had begun at the cottage on the other side of the world. The original title had been 'The Hog.' After some deliberation he retitled it 'The Blue Air Compressor.'
He had resolved it to his own satisfaction. There was a certain lack of motivation concerning the final scene where the fat old woman was murdered, but he did not see that as a fault. In 'The Tell-Tale Heart,' Edgar A. Poe's finest story, there is no real motivation for the murder of the old man, and that was as it should be. The motive is not the point.
* * *
She got very big just before the end: even her legs swelled up to twice their normal size. At the very end, her tongue popped out of her mouth like a party-favor.
* * *
After leaving Bombay, Gerald Nately went on to Hong Kong, then to Kowloon. The ivory guillotine caught his fancy immediately.
* * *
As the author, I can see only one correct omega to this story, and that is to tell you how Gerald Nately got rid of the body. He tore up the floor boards of the shed, dismembered Mrs. Leighton, and buried the sections in the sand beneath.
When he notified the police that she had been rnissing for a week, the local constable and a State Policeman came at once. Gerald entertained them quite naturalIy, even offering them coffee. He heard no beating heart, but then--the interview was conducted in the big house.
On the following day he flew away, toward Bombay, Hong Kong, and Kowloon.
