Rock Island daily Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1886-1893, 1892-05-25
THE DEAD MANS STORY.
The Story of Crime Whose Punish
ment Was Not of Men.


ment Was Not of Men.
The first sensations of the murderer were
of vague, dreamy sort. He realized indie
scribable rslief to think that he had got
rid of the body; he thought of the river
and how the river would tell no tales; and
how the corpse, sewed up in a carpet sack,
had sunk like stone in the night; and of
his stealthy retreat under the hazy CLAM
our of the sickly river lights-and then his
fancies suddenly took wider range, and
he thought not of the dead, but of the liv-
ing, that is to say, of himself and of his
safety.
Thus the first night wore slowly away,
and when the morning came and the gold
en- water of the new day began to dance
upon the wall he was still there, frozen
into that oblivion that waits on one whose
conscience is his own accuser, and for
whom this world offers peace no more
Days dragged along, and by and by the
sensation of the atrocious murder gradu-
ally lost its relish for the daily papers; in
the mad whirl of big New York it was for
aforementioned up by some new nine
days wonder.
AS for Sidney Lafarge, he had evaded
arrest, and as time wore on he gradually
learned to look upon himself as safe from
the vengeance of the law.
Still, who was that old man who ALWAYS
kept Lafarge in sight? The day he first
saw the shadow on his track he concluded
at once that he was safe now only in mix
ing with the crowd. He wandered up and
down the BoSery. He crossed to Central
park, then back again, to the river, and so
on, hour after hour, until night replaced
the waning day, and then he found that he
had moved in great circle and that his
starting point had been his journeys end.
The detective did not come back that
next day following, but he did return the
next night. He was an old man with n
gray beard and furtive glances such as
stamped him as an expert thief catcher.
This shadow Lafarge struggled in vain to
avoid. Now and again he would evade
the sleuth, but usually the last restless
glance that Lafarge cast over his shoulder
as he started into his dark hallway, in the
evening after a long days wandering up
and down the streets of the great city.
would rest ON the watchful presence OF
the mysterious stranger.
That last night Lafarge was sitting in
his room, lost in the dull smoke dream of
one who is always thinking of some haunt
ing, secret sorrow. He was saving to him
self.
Il must escape. Tomorrow shall take
passage as n stowaway on an East India
liner. Then this town shall know me no
more"
He started to his feet, startled cry of
terror trembling from his lips
There, in the twilight of the little room,
before Sidney Lafarce, stood the man who
had been on his trail.
With a wild cry of despair Lafarge
sprang from his seat and made a desperate
lunge at the detectives throat
There was a crash of glass. and Sidney
Lafarge's hands were sopped with blood.
He had seen and sprung at his own reflec-
ton in the mirror, for the old man was but
the presentment Of his former self. wasted
away and transformed in n single night
and as the result of a nights crime-trans-
formed by the spell of an avenging CON
science, whose power would haunt and
hold as long as wretched life endured and
only to be broken at last when death
freezes the strings of the haunted heart in
the mute and tOngueless silence of another
and an unknown world.
HE was only fool,'' said the coroner
the next morning, as he lighted his cigar;
che was only drunken fool. boys, and he
must have cut his throat while he had an
attack of the jim jams, for see that the
last thing he did was to smash the big
looking glass in his room''
Some of them laughed, and some of them
scowled. By and by, while they were
drinking, the van drove up for potter's
field.
And none shall ever know.-John HUI
bert Greusel in New York Recorder