Not until he had stepped forward and bent over the distorted
face of the thing before me, did I attempt to speak. When I did, my
thoughts were a jargon.

"What, in God's name," I cried, "could have brought such horror to a
strong man? What--"

"Loneliness, perhaps," suggested M. S. with a smile. "The fellow is
evidently the watchman. He is alone, in a huge, deserted pit of
darkness, for hours at a time. His light is merely a ghostly ray of
illumination, hardly enough to do more than increase the darkness. I
have heard of such cases before."

He shrugged his shoulders. Even as he spoke, I sensed the evasion in his
words. When I replied, he hardly heard my answer, for he had suddenly
stepped forward, where he could look directly into those fear twisted
eyes.

"Dale," he said at length, turning slowly to face me, "you ask for an
explanation of this horror? There _is_ an explanation. It is written
with an almost fearful clearness on this fellow's mind. Yet if I tell
you, you will return to your old skepticism--your damnable habit of
disbelief!"

I looked at him quietly. I had heard M. S. claim, at other times, that
he could read the thoughts of a dead man by the mental image that lay on
that man's brain. I had laughed at him. Evidently, in the present
moment, he recalled those laughs. Nevertheless, he faced me seriously.

"I can see two things, Dale," he said deliberately. "One of them is a
dark, narrow room--a room piled with indistinct boxes and crates, and
with an open door bearing the black number 4167. And in that open
doorway, coming forward with slow steps--alive, with arms extended and a
frightful face of passion--is a decayed human form. A corpse, Dale. A
man who has been dead for many days, and is now--_alive_!"

* * * * *

M. S. turned slowly and pointed with upraised hand to the corpse on the
grating.

"That is why," he said simply, "this fellow died from horror."

His words died into emptiness. For a moment I stared at him. Then, in
spite of our surroundings, in spite of the late hour, the loneliness of
the street, the awful thing beside us, I laughed.

He turned upon me with a snarl. For the first time in my life I saw M.
S. convulsed with rage. His old, lined face had suddenly become savage
with intensity.

"You laugh at me, Dale," he thundered. "By God, you make a mockery out
of a science that I have spent more than my life in studying! You call
yourself a medic