seven weeks ago I still had the book with
me, and the contents were so deeply engraved on my brain that I could
think of nothing else. Day and night I thought about it, until at
length I found myself actually imagining how I would go about
emulating his crimes. Then I began to get the horrible impulse to
fondle a butcher knife--Drukker used a butcher knife, you know!--and
more than once I was struck with the scarcely resistible urge to cut
off someone's head. It didn't matter whose head--but just a head!"

"Easy, Carse!" I cried with a wary glance at the kitchen table. "Tell
me the rest, but don't excite yourself. What happened then?"

~ ~ ~

He slid back in a sort of stupor, shook his head several times, then
passed his hand across his eyes in a gesture of despair.

"You ought to know damned well what happened if you were listening at
your door last night. Six weeks ago I went to bed and dreamed
horribly. I had just finished reading the first confession in the
diary--some strange impulse made me read _that_ confession and no
other--and in my sleep I saw a human head staring at me. It was a
cruel, Teutonic head, and I knew that it was Emil Drukker's head
hanging in a gallows rope. Then he smiled at me; a horrible, vivid,
real smile, and the head vanished. From then on, for how long I cannot
say, I sat as a spectator and watched the complete action of Drukker's
Number One.

"I saw Drukker leave his house and walk down a dark street with no
other illumination than a few scattered electric lights. I tried to
imagine how they were electric lights, for they had only gas in his
day, but nevertheless they were modern lights, and the street looked
like the street in front of my own house. He walked about ten blocks;
then he saw a woman standing on a street corner. There wasn't another
soul in sight. He crept closer to her, then drew out his butcher knife
and hid it in the folds of his coat--a coat which looked strangely
like my own wind-breaker. He first tried to talk with the woman, but
she was not interested; so he pulled out the knife and brought it
sweeping down across her throat. The blood spurted like a fountain and
overran Drukker's hand, but he only laughed and pushed the woman to
the ground, then knelt over her and began a horrible sawing movement
with his knife. When he had finished, he drew a towel from his pocket
and wrapped the head tightly to prevent the blood from trailing him
home. He came ba