e
case and requesting that he come to visit me. His reply was swift and
brief; he had already commenced his investigations of the head-hunting
crime and nothing on earth could deter him from his set course.
Knowing him as I did, I could do nothing but hope that the Head-hunter
would be swiftly captured and the case brought to a finish. It was an
unpleasant shock, therefore, when I read--exactly one week
later--that a second and identical crime had been committed.

~ ~ ~

Even in my own city, three thousand miles from the center of the
crimes, there was wild confusion at the announcement of this second
spectacular murder. The reader may recall the international effects of
the infamous "Ripper" crimes which terrified London a few decades ago
and he will understand how rapidly the Head-hunter's fame spread
through crime-conscious America. Both murders were made particularly
mysterious because of the disappearance of the victims' heads. I knew
the damaging influence which these doings would produce upon Carse,
for he had always been interested in decapitations, and his thesis at
the University of Graz had been based upon the mad career of Emil
Drukker, the Head-hunter of Cologne.

I wrote again to Carse and begged him to abandon his studies in these
new murders, but, as before, his response was cold and discouraging.
There was a wild and almost fanatical tone in his letter which was
indicative of his obsessed mind, and an ugly premonition occurred to
me that this would be the breaking-point of his career.

The third and fourth murders, so horribly identical with the first
two, came about at weekly intervals, and the city was in the grip of
strangling terror. There was no rime or reason for the crimes, and yet
the diabolical precision of the murderer seemed to indicate he was a
madman of uncanny intelligence. In all four cases his victims were
vagabonds and people of the lowest order. In none of the murders had
the victim been assaulted, but the head had disappeared, seemingly for
ever. There was not a shred of evidence pointing to the solution, and,
except that the police knew him to be a homicidal maniac, there was
not a single person in a city of several millions whom they could call
the murderer. Far worse than the four murders committed was the belief
that they would continue week after week to an indeterminable
conclusion.

I left for the city by plane on the evening of the discovery of the
fifth vi