ukker's diary. On each of these nights, while Carse watched it in a
dream, an identical murder was committed somewhere in the city and the
man whom he recognized as the murderer was Emil Drukker. It was as if
Carse's dreams, projected into reality by the sheer vividness of the
diary, had resurrected Emil Drukker from his grave and set him free to
re-enact his former crimes!

I am mad, you will say; but I speak of demonism and not law. How else
can you explain the duality of these murders? How else can you explain
Carse's ignorance of the crimes? How else can you explain those brutal
dreams, the fruit of whose reality Carse found each morning on the
floor beside his bed? Nor is it enough to stop alone with this
question. How many men besides Jason Carse have spent sleepless nights
over the diary of Emil Drukker?

The newspapers will answer that question each time they are opened; in
Paris the police discover a headless body lying along the wharves, and
the murderer is still unknown; in Berlin a college professor kills
himself upon the discovery of a human head lying near his bed with his
own hunting-knife stuck to the hilt into its brain; in Stockholm the
police discover the bodies of two women lying in an empty house--their
heads have not yet been found; and in Cleveland, one of our greatest
cities, is reported the discovery of the tenth headless corpse in a
series of murders that has gripped the city in terror. What kind of
person commits such crimes? And why do the missing heads turn up years
later in the basement of a house owned by a mild-appearing and docile
old man?

Jason Carse was not the first man to pay with his life for crimes such
as these, nor is he the last. It is well to beware of sickish-smelling
trunks that are left in deserted houses, and I caution the reader
against stepping on misshapen bundles of clothing which he may find
half hidden in a clump of bushes.

For the diary of Emil Drukker is missing from the drawer where I left
it, and I have been told that a strange, Germanic-looking man was seen
prowling about the house just before its disappearance.

* * * * *

* * * * *

Transcriber's Note:

Author's archaic and variable spelling and hyphenation is
preserved.

Author's punctuation style is preserved.

Passages in italics indicated by _underscores_.

End of the Project Gutenberg