y had found him insane,
violently and homicidally insane, they would not have dared report
such a finding to the court. Society demanded a death in return for a
death, and Jason Carse was nailed to his coffin at the first moment of
his arrest. Had he been spared the gallows by the court, he would not
have been spared the gallows by the mobs that milled about the
detention prison; for continually throughout the trial was the grim
reminder that society represented by mobs has not yet forgotten the
use of lynch law.

Carse's death put a definite end to the head-hunting crimes in this
city, and for the first time in over six weeks the metropolitan area
has been able to breathe freely. I have lost a faithful and sincere
friend; but I lost him, not on the gallows, but three months ago when
he first discovered the diary of Emil Drukker.

It is the diary, not my mourning, which has prompted me to pen this
account of my knowledge of the head-hunting crimes. During the trial,
as you may remember, I sought to introduce the diary as major evidence
in support of Carse's somnambulistic manias, but it was waived out of
court with ridicule and contempt.

One must admit that Carse's story as he told it to me, and as I later
reiterated it to the court, was fantastic and highly improbable. But
there are certain irrefutable arguments in support of Carse's story
which shed a terrible light, not alone upon the case, but on all
criminal cases of similar nature. For one thing, a hypnotic
examination by competent state alienists was completely unsuccessful
in the attempt to bring forth his subconscious knowledge of any of the
six murders. Secondly, Carse was unable, despite his most intense and
willing efforts, to reconstruct even the smallest part of any one of
the crimes. His only acquaintance with his own alleged activities was
brought to him in _dreams_.

A further significant fact, which the court ignored as irrelevant, was
the ghastly identity of Carse's supposed crimes and those confessed by
Emil Drukker. It is impossible that this duality of murders could be
brought about by mere coincidence, for the similarity of detail was
carried too far. This fact alone presupposes the statement that there
was a horrible and unnatural bondage between Emil Drukker and Jason
Carse--the bondage of the diary!

One night of each week for six weeks Jason Carse was compelled by some
unknown power to dream about a murder confessed and described in
Dr