The Damned Thing Read online

  III

  The coroner rose from his seat and stood beside the dead man. Liftingan edge of the sheet he pulled it away, exposing the entire body,altogether naked and showing in the candle light a clay-like yellow. Ithad, however, broad maculations of bluish-black, obviously caused byextravasated blood from contusions. The chest and sides looked as ifthey had been beaten with a bludgeon. There were dreadful lacerations;the skin was torn in strips and shreds.

  The coroner moved round to the end of the table and undid a silkhandkerchief, which had been passed under the chin and knotted on thetop of the head. When the handkerchief was drawn away it exposed whathad been the throat. Some of the jurors who had risen to get a betterview repented their curiosity, and turned away their faces. WitnessHarker went to the open window and leaned out across the sill, faint andsick. Dropping the handkerchief upon the dead man's neck, the coronerstepped to an angle of the room, and from a pile of clothing producedone garment after another, each of which he held up a moment forinspection. All were torn, and stiff with blood. The jurors did notmake a closer inspection. They seemed rather uninterested. They had, intruth, seen all this before; the only thing that was new to them beingHarker's testimony.

  "Gentlemen," the coroner said, "we have no more evidence, I think. Yourduty has been already explained to you; if there is nothing you wish toask you may go outside and consider your verdict."

  The foreman rose--a tall, bearded man of sixty, coarsely clad.

  "I should like to ask one question, Mr. Coroner," he said. "What asylumdid this yer last witness escape from?"

  "Mr. Harker," said the coroner, gravely and tranquilly, "from whatasylum did you last escape?"

  Harker flushed crimson again, but said nothing, and the seven jurorsrose and solemnly filed out of the cabin.

  "If you have done insulting me, sir," said Harker, as soon as he and theofficer were left alone with the dead man, "I suppose I am at liberty togo?"

  "Yes."

  Harker started to leave, but paused, with his hand on the door latch.The habit of his profession was strong in him--stronger than his senseof personal dignity. He turned about and said:

  "The book that you have there--I recognize it as Morgan's diary. Youseemed greatly interested in it; you read in it while I was testifying.May I see it? The public would like--"

  "The book will cut no figure in this matter," replied the official,slipping it into his coat pocket; "all the entries in it were madebefore the writer's death."

  As Harker passed out of the house the jury reentered and stood about thetable on which the now covered corpse showed under the sheet with sharpdefinition. The foreman seated himself near the candle, producedfrom his breast pocket a pencil and scrap of paper, and wrote ratherlaboriously the following verdict, which with various degrees of effortall signed:

  "We, the jury, do find that the remains come to their death at the handsof a mountain lion, but some of us thinks, all the same, they had fits."

  IV

  In the diary of the late Hugh Morgan are certain interesting entrieshaving, possibly, a scientific value as suggestions. At the inquest uponhis body the book was not put in evidence; possibly the coroner thoughtit not worth while to confuse the jury. The date of the first of theentries mentioned can not be ascertained; the upper part of the leaf istorn away; the part of the entry remaining is as follows:

  "... would run in a half circle, keeping his head turned always towardthe centre and again he would stand still, barking furiously. At last heran away into the brush as fast as he could go. I thought at first thathe had gone mad, but on returning to the house found no other alterationin his manner than what was obviously due to fear of punishment.

  "Can a dog see with his nose? Do odors impress some olfactory centrewith images of the thing emitting them? . . .

  "Sept 2.--Looking at the stars last night as they rose above thecrest of the ridge east of the house, I observed them successivelydisappear--from left to right. Each was eclipsed but an instant, andonly a few at the same time, but along the entire length of the ridgeall that were within a degree or two of the crest were blotted out. Itwas as if something had passed along between me and them; but I couldnot see it, and the stars were not thick enough to define its outline.Ugh! I don't like this. . . ."

  Several weeks' entries are missing, three leaves being torn from thebook.

  "Sept. 27.--It has been about here again--I find evidences of itspresence every day. I watched again all of last night in the same cover,gun in hand, double-charged with buckshot. In the morning the freshfootprints were there, as before. Yet I would have sworn that I did notsleep--indeed, I hardly sleep at all. It is terrible, insupportable! Ifthese amazing experiences are real I shall go mad; if they are fancifulI am mad already.

  "Oct. 3.--I shall not go--it shall not drive me away. No, this is _my_house, my land. God hates a coward....

  "Oct. 5.--I can stand it no longer; I have invited Harker to pass a fewweeks with me--he has a level head. I can judge from his manner if hethinks me mad.

  "Oct. 7.--I have the solution of the problem; it came to me lastnight--suddenly, as by revelation. How simple--how terribly simple!

  "There are sounds that we can not hear. At either end of the scale arenotes that stir no chord of that imperfect instrument, the human ear.They are too high or too grave. I have observed a flock of blackbirdsoccupying an entire treetop--the tops of several trees--and all in fullsong. Suddenly--in a moment--at absolutely the same instant--allspring into the air and fly away. How? They could not all see oneanother--whole treetops intervened. At no point could a leader have beenvisible to all. There must have been a signal of warning or command,high and shrill above the din, but by me unheard. I have observed,too, the same simultaneous flight when all were silent, among not onlyblackbirds, but other birds--quail, for example, widely separated bybushes--even on opposite sides of a hill.

  "It is known to seamen that a school of whales basking or sporting onthe surface of the ocean, miles apart, with the convexity of the earthbetween them, will sometimes dive at the same instant--all gone out ofsight in a moment. The signal has been sounded--too grave for the earof the sailor at the masthead and his comrades on the deck--whonevertheless feel its vibrations in the ship as the stones of acathedral are stirred by the bass of the organ.

  "As with sounds, so with colors. At each end of the solar spectrum thechemist can detect the presence of what are known as 'actinic'rays. They represent colors--integral colors in the composition oflight--which we are unable to discern. The human eye is an imperfectinstrument; its range is but a few octaves of the real 'chromatic scale'I am not mad; there are colors that we can not see.

  "And, God help me! the Damned Thing is of such a color!"