Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-07-20
Copyright 1880. by North

! Crossing, wormed his way into this
peaceful home, and, hypocrite that he
is, persuaded Jane Runnels, against
her fathers wishes, to marry him.
When the marriage had taken place,
when the father had died and the
RunnelS' money came into his wife's
hands, he" the accusatory voice
quavered and broke-"he killed her
beat her to death with an empty
whisky bottle and hid her body behind
the bricks and mortar Of this fire.
| place"
The unmistakable ring Of truth in
the recital sent a thrill of consterna-
| ton, of sick foreboding, throughout the
room. With one accord every person
| present turned toward the millionaire
What they saw did not tend to lessen
| their anxiety.
Squirming over on his uninjured
shoulder, the owner of the Fress Press
| buried his face in the sofa cushions.
Don'tI was all too obviously the pro-
test Of guilty man tortured beyond
| endurance.
Cropsey laid q hand on his employ
eriS shoulder.
1.-THE fellow is mad" he said hurried
| ~, stark mad"
John Diamond flung the hand away
a sitting position.
Reading the purpose in the eyes that
| stared at him out of the white face,
Cropsey was quick to follow up his
| protest with a warning.
Don't say anything tonight, chief.
You're hurt. You're not yourself"
The words fell on deaf ears. In a
voice from which every emotion save
that of utter WEAKNESS had fed, John
Diamond announced: II must speak.
| Don't try to stop me-"
His gaze swept the room, to pause at
last. unwillingly on the mammoth fire.
place.
"When Derrick Cranson says I killed
Jane Runnels, he speaks the truth. I
killed her-beat her to death, here,
on this very spot. It was a drunken
crime, a crime of the moment. There
was no generalization in the act, only
a frenZied mans attempt to check the
tongue of a shrewish woman" He
paused. when I saw what had done,
fear and the recollection Of a story I
had read suggested a means Of cover
ing up my crime. was rebuilding
the fireplace at the time, trying to
model it after the one In my home in
Maryland. There was quite q wide
space between 1t and the outer wall
of the house." Without raising his
eyes, which during the recital he had
kept studiously fixed on the rug beside
the couch, IT picked my wife's body up
in my arms and dropped it into this
space. The sound 1t made as 1t hit the
floor did something to me. had to
drown the recollection of that thud
before I could go on with the rest OF
the walling up. There were two full
bottles of liquor in the cupboard. How
much / drank I never kneW-a tum-
blerful with every row of bricks set.
II
next day, the fireplace was finished, but
across its face were scrawled the words
| YOU see there noW-'Ask no questions
No one spoke. The horror of what
| they had Just heard seemed temporarily
to have destroyed the power OF speech.
The millionaire, uninterrupted, resumed
his confession:
st scraped the words off with
| troWel, but the next day they were
there again, and the next and the next.
Every time I recovered from one OF
the drunken stupors with which tried
to blot out the memory OF what hao
done, those terrible words faced me"
With q contraction of the broWS, tor
course, I knew was putting them
there myself-that my subsconscious
| mind had decided to warn the conscious
me against too much talking-a hunter
hunted fixation. But I also knew that
If the thing kept up should go mad.
So I packed what few things needed,
closed the house and fed"
Still no one spoke. There was notn-
ing to say.
John Diamond seemed depressed by
the silence, but he struggled on, be-
ginning painstakingly from the point
where he had left off:
For the first week or two thought
Of course my crime would be discov-
cred, that should be hunted down
and executed / even resigned myself
to the thought of death, welcoming 1t
as a blessed relief. But as time wore
on and still walked the earth, free
man, hope revived. wanted to live.
I wanted to succeed" With grim
smile, II have done both
At this, without rhyme or reason, the
emotional Abby commenced to cry. Like
her virtue, her grief was uncontrolled.
1t took noisy means of expressing itself.
Until the worst paroxysms had been
hushed, no one could get a word In
edgewiSe. But at last the monotonous
voice was able to make itself heard
again.
after three months I summoned up
sufficient courage to come back to Hales
Crossing, bringing with me hermeti-
cally sealed coffin. The coffin was sup
posed to hold the body Of my wife, dea"