The Project Gutenberg EBook of There is a Reaper ..., by Charles V. De Vet

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Title: There is a Reaper ...

Author: Charles V. De Vet

Illustrator: W. E. Terry

Release Date: September 10, 2009 [EBook #29954]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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There Is A Reaper ...

_By Charles V. De Vet_

Doctors had given him just one month to
live. A month to wonder, what comes afterward?
There was one way to find out--ask a dead man!

The amber brown of the liquor disguised the poison it held, and I
watched with a smile on my lips as he drank it. There was no pity in my
heart for him. He was a jackal in the jungle of life, and I ... I was
one of the carnivores. It is the lot of the jackals of life to be
devoured by the carnivore.

Suddenly the contented look on his face froze into a startled stillness.
I knew he was feeling the first savage twinge of the agony that was to
come. He turned his head and looked at me, and I saw suddenly that he
knew what I had done.

"You murderer!" he cursed me, and then his body arched in the middle and
his voice choked off deep in his throat.

For a short minute he sat, tense, his body stiffened by the agony that
rode it--unable to move a muscle. I watched the torment in his eyes
build up to a crescendo of pain, until the suffering became so great
that it filmed his eyes, and I knew that, though he still stared
directly at me, he no longer saw me.

Then, as suddenly as the spasm had come, the starch went out of his body
and his back slid slowly down the chair edge. He landed heavily with his
head resting limply against the seat of the chair. His right leg doubled
up in a kind of jerk, before he was still.

I knew the time had come. "Where are you?" I asked.

This moment had cost me sixty thousand dollars.

Three weeks ago the best doctors in the state had given me a month to
live. And with seven million dollars in the bank I couldn't buy a minute
more.

I accepted the doctors' decision philosophically, l