Newark evening star and Newark advertiser. [volume] (Newark, N.J.) 1909-1916, 1913-06-23

with inordinate delight renewed
necessity for reaching own room" He
| took the last three yards in series
of staggering bounds which landed
him with a thump against his door.
| He canght the knob as he fell. and the
barrier opened, letting him tumble on
his own motion to the floor. He
kicked the door shut as he lay pros
trate, and then managed to pull him
/ self up right and reach the electric
light butten-for Mrs. Moore burned
gas in the halls for economy, but cleo
| trio lights in the rooms. The two
tumbles had thrown him into another
state of consciousness; his head began
to clear and his motions to steady.
So he turned, his predicament still in
| his mind, to the wash-stand in the
corner.
Above it hung mirror. In passing.
Tommy gaze swept the glass. leaped
back, caught on what blanched his
face to a sickly white. what steadied
his unseady figure until it stood
stranght and stiff, what cleared his
head so violently that he could think
with all the swiftness of terror.
On his dress shirt-front was the i'm
print of a huge red hand.
"Whose?" Tommy asked himself
one instant The next, his gaze
bounded from the mirror to his own
hands.
Blood mired his fingers. On his coat
was blood, on his sleeves was blood.
on his knees was blood. on his very
shoes. He looked at the mirror again.
Across his chin zigzagged a dark red
line-blood, also.
His FIRST sans thought was that he
had cut himself, and was bleeding to
death. He looked again at his hands,
but saw no wound. Then. drunken
memories lingering a little in his
sober mind, he remembered the
fall and the process of wiping his
hands He ran back to the hall
way, turned up the pin-point of light
on the gas-jet. There it was. thin
stream of blood, spotted little where
he had fallen In it, And 1t was widest
where 1t began its flow at the
threshold of Captain Hanska's door.
! In a weak access of real terror he
fell to pounding on the wall and
shouting:
Murder! Murder"
Suddenly mastering himself. he
seized the knob of Captain Hanska's
door. The latch gave way-it was not
! locked. But 1t opened no more than
a foot or two-scarcely enough to
give a man passa ge-when something
locked 1t from behind. In the
temporary weakness of his will
Tommy North shrank back from en-
tering such place of veritable hor-
ror. He shouted again, and now Pro-
fessor Noll, looking in his bathrobe
Hike a strange priest of a strange
/ Eastern rite. rushed from his room
gasping:
Whats the natter"
| The blood, the pale. gibbering, dab
bled young man. were explanation
enough. He himself opened the door
| as far as it could go, and edged into
| the room.
Matches, quick" he called from
within. Tommy North found his
match-case, and the mastery of
another mind, with the example of
better courage, drew him after Pro-
fessor Noll. He lighted a match,
held II up IL Jared and blazed until
| 1t burned his fingers. In that flick
ering transitory light they say all
that 1t was necessary to see.
| Captain Hanska's body blocked the
door He lay dressed in his pajamas,
the shrunken relic of what had been
a portly man-lay on his back with
| his hands lifted over his head as
though he were clutehing at the air.
| From his breast stuck the haft of a
great knife, and from the wound the
! pool Of blood flowed TO the threshold.