Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1929-01-14

NSOtIblituCu ltUII rIISt EdRS.b .
one approaching on tiptoe. Another
moment of silence. Then the door was
pulled open suddenly.
IF you're out come in" said the
girl, invisible behind the door.
The old woman breathed a sigh of
relief when she recognized the reporter
she knew. The other was introduced
as a famous witch doctor from Ger
many attending the York witchcraft
trials, who was eager to try the potency
OF his magic IN the demons that were
pursuing the family from one house
to another in this time-forsaken island
Of mill tenements.
"Oh, sir, If you can only help u.s."
said the old woman. They're going
to get u.s., They're going to kill
Johnnie. He just had a spell with his
face tonight. I can't live with it."
johnnie is about so years old, a Ger
man emigrant, who earns his living by
salvaging merchandisable trash from
the city dump. His face, with its livid
scars n patches of black beard, is
the face OF a Mephistopheles burning
in hel fire.
Jealous Of Girl, 16.
1t all started. the woman said, about
a year ago, when some neighbors be-
come jealous of the l~6-year-old daueh-
ter because of the good looking gentle
man who was calling on her. At first
the witches had confined themselves to
Fostering. There would be mysterious
Knocks at h doors ind windows. When
some member of the family answered,
the visitor would be gone. but always
there would be a sinister black cat
seated a few feet away Time after
time this had happened.
Then one evening old Johnnie was
seated alone In the house with two cats.
He heard a scratching at the kitchen
door. He saw nothing. but one Of the
cats arched its back, growled and start
ed in frantic pursuit of some invisible
object. The other cat was asleep, Three
times the cat tore through the house,
obviously chasing something, although.
the old man is positive, there wasn't
a thing to be seen.
Early the next evening the cat died,
for no known reason. Johnnie threw it
into the back yard, intending to bury it
In the morning.
This, the old thinks. was a
fatal mistake. A bright Summer moon
light followed the dusk. About mid
night she and her daughter looked out
the window and saw, sitting on the
dead cats body, a strange black animal
with eyes of fire and a long bushy tail.
It looked more like a cat than any
other creature-and vet it wasn't a cat.
The next morning the cats body had
disappeared. The strange black animal
in the moonlight, the old lady a was
vampire OF some sort which was en-
abled. IN some mystical hellish way, to
establish a contact with the family
through this pet cat. Almost imme-
diately Johnie's face began to get
worse. For hours at a time it would
be twisted In paroxysms of pain. The
doctors could do nothing for him. There
were weeks when he couldn't work In
the dump. The rent Of So a month
began to run behind.
Then n says she saw one of the
neighbors shake her apron toward rhc
open bedroom window. At once the
covering was agitated as If by rats
moving underneath it. The neighbor,
she said. a thrown in an apronful
of hexes-little invisible rats. She
wouldn't go to bed that night. She
warned old Johnnie, but he was tired
with his long labors in the dump and
~disregarded the warning. That night
one of the hexes got in his throat and
was choking him. They had to call
a doctor, or he would have died. They
could hear hexes running around in the
walls all night.
Gets Infallible Recipe.
So she consulted a witch doctor. r.
gave her what was supposed to be an
tnfallible recipe. She twisted q white