Part 2

William Waters was not in any way what you would call a braggart, yet upon two things did he pride himself. These two things were: first, an earnest and sincere contempt for all things supernatural; and, secondly, a marksmanship with a Colt’s No. 4 revolver which bordered on the marvelous. He had on several occasions proved his bravery by such feats as sleeping alone an entire night in a house said to be haunted, and by visiting a country graveyard at midnight, and digging up a corpse. He had likewise won numerous bets by pumping six bullets into an inch and a half bull’s eye at a distance of sixteen paces, and being a healthy and vigorous animal his pride was perhaps more or less excusable.

In the house in which Waters had his rooms there also lived a Fool. His particular brand of folly was practical joking, which is universally recognized by intelligent men as a particularly acute and dangerous kind of idiocy. As a child The Fool had soaked a neighbor’s cat in kerosene and then applied a match. Since then he had performed many other equally humorous feats.

After much planning The Fool devised a joke, the victim of which was to be The Man Who Knew Not Fear, as the jester sneeringly called Waters.

The prologue to this joke was the substitution of blanks in each of the six chambers of the No. 4 Colt’s, which hung over the headboard in William Waters’s sleeping-room, not as a weapon of defense, but as a glittering little possession dear to the heart of its owner.

The Fool had once, in the presence of all the people at the dinner table, asked Waters what he would do should he wake up at night and find a ghost in the room.

“Fire a bullet straight at his heart, so be sure and wear a breastplate,” Waters answered promptly, and the laugh had been on the joker.

After removing the cartridges from the revolver, The Fool withdrew the bullets from each, and placed them in his pocket. He had that day also laid in a supply of phosphorescent paint and several yards of white muslin.

Waters never locked his door at night, for he was as free from fear of all things physical as from those supernatural. This of course made the program which The Fool had arranged easy to carry out, though he would not have hesitated at a little thing like stealing the key and having an impression made. He was a very thorough practical joker.

That night as the French clock in the hall outside Waters’s room was striking twelve The Man Who Knew Not Fear was awakened by a rattling of chains and a dismal moaning.

As he opened his eyes he saw standing in the darkest corner of the room a white-robed figure, which glistened with phosphorescent lights as it waved its arms to and fro. Without a moment’s hesitation, Waters reached for his revolver, and leveling it at the moaning figure, fired full at its breast.

The Fool, chuckling to himself behind the sheet, thrust his hand upon his heart, and apparently plucking something from the folds of cloth, he tossed back toward the bed a bullet.

The Man Who Knew Not Fear reached for the heavy little object that he had felt strike the bed-clothes, and his hand touching the bit of lead, he picked it up curiously, then realizing what it was that he held, he sat up stiffly in bed, and tried to raise his arm again. But his muscles refused to obey. The thought that his revolver had been tampered with never entered his head. For the first time in his life a fear, sickening and unmanning as it was new, came over him. He recognized in that little piece of lead a bullet from the gun which had never before failed him. What was that moaning Thing upon which powder and lead had no effect? Three times he tried to raise his arm, and each time it fell back upon the bed.

Meanwhile the rattling of chains began once more, and with eyes starting from his head because of his fear, Waters saw the fearsome shape advancing upon him. By a supreme effort he raised his arm, and emptied the remaining five chambers of his revolver at the approaching figure.

The Fool, who had never ceased moaning while the shots were being fired, executed a rapid movement with his hands as if catching the bullets, and then slowly tossed them back, one after the other.

The man in bed reached for the little balls of lead mechanically, then straightened back against the pillow, and remained perfectly motionless, staring at the Thing, which had now stopped again and was groaning dismally.

For five minutes neither man moved, then The Fool, thinking that the joke was once more on him, for Waters still refused to speak, gathered his glittering robe about him, and slunk out.

Back once more in his own room he undressed hurriedly, and slipped into bed. He was disappointed. He had expected that Waters would be terribly frightened, and that he could joke him unmercifully at the table for the next week. Then, too, the obstinate silence of the man puzzled him.

About five o’clock in the morning he woke up vaguely alarmed. He did not know what the matter was, but he could not sleep. He could not get out of his mind that strange silence of the man down-stairs. Then, suddenly, a terrible suspicion came over him.

“Not that, my God, not that!” he cried. Jumping from the bed he threw on a few clothes, and crept fearfully down to the scene of his midnight joke.

He opened the door cautiously, and, feeling for the button, turned on the electric light. Then he gave a hysterical cry, half laugh, half moan, and, rushing from the room, he fled down the hall out into the street.

For this is what he had seen: in the bed propped up stiffly against the pillow, and staring with dull, unseeing eyes into the corner, sat “The Man Who Knew not Fear.” Not a muscle had he moved since The Fool had left him six hours before.

One hand still held the silver-mounted revolver, while in the other were tightly clasped--six little leaden balls.

THE MAN AND THE BEAST.

THE MAN AND THE BEAST.[2]

Bobo, the wild man of Borneo, sat in his iron-barred cage reading the morning paper, while he pulled vigorously at a short, black clay pipe.

It was nearly time for the show to begin, so he could only glance hurriedly at the stock report; for Bobo was interested in copper.

On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays there was on exhibition in the side-show connected with Poole Brothers’ Royal Roman Hippodrome and Three-Ring Circus what was widely advertised as the only real wild man in captivity.

On alternate days--that is, on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays--the cage of Bobo was closed by a gaudily painted cover; and visitors on those days were told that the wild man was sick.

Notwithstanding this report, there could be found on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, out in one of the New York suburbs, a middle-aged Irishman named Patsy McLockin. The connection may not at first be evident.

Patsy wasn’t nice looking, even when he was dressed in his best black suit; for, as the people on Blenden Street remarked, he was too hairy.

He used to wear gloves when on the street, even in the hottest weather; but he couldn’t very well wear gloves on his face, though if he could it would have saved the small children of the neighborhood cases of fright both serious and lasting.

Poole Brothers’ Royal Roman Hippodrome and Three Ring Circus was playing a winter engagement in New York City, and had been very successful.

The show was to start in about two weeks for a trip through New England; and since Mrs. Patsy McLockin had consented to remain in the city till the circus came back in the fall, Bobo agreed to exhibit himself every day while on the trip.

When Stetson, manager of the freaks in the side-show, had spoken to Bobo of the necessity of appearing every day while traveling, he had also mentioned a material raise in the wild man’s salary.

Every two weeks during the winter Stetson had written a check for seventy-five dollars in acknowledgment of services rendered. In the event of Bobo’s agreeing to make his appearance on each of the one-day stands, Stetson was authorized by the powers above to draw these fortnightly checks for one hundred and fifty dollars, and, after much discussion in the Blenden Street home, Stetson’s offer had been accepted.

On this morning Bobo was trying to decide whether to sell out his twenty-three shares of Isle Royal while that stock was at eighty-one, or to hang on to it for a while, hoping for a rise.

He fully intended to sell out some time during the next two weeks, for he did not want to be bothered with the stock while on the Eastern trip.

“Get together there, you freaks,” called Stetson; “the whistle has just blown, and the yaps will begin coming in soon.”

Bobo tucked his paper into a little wooden box in the back of the cage, knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and curled up on the straw, pretending to go to sleep.

He never worked over time, did Bobo; and up to the time when Stetson brought him his piece of meat, and began telling the people of the terrible struggle which had taken place in the swamps of Borneo, when the wild man was captured, Bobo always pretended to be asleep.

When, however, the manager reached a certain point in his narration, the nearest of the onlookers were usually startled by a savage growl, and the wild man from Borneo got up on all fours.

Some hysterical woman generally screamed at this juncture, for, with the help of his make-up box, Bobo certainly did look the part.

For clothes, he wore merely a ragged breech-cloth about his loins, while the rest of his body was bare, save for a tawny growth of red hair. His skin was stained a dark brown, and in several places there were great raw-looking spots, where the manager said Bobo had bitten himself.

But the wild man’s face was what caused the alarm on the part of the women and children. His nose was a snout-like protuberance with great cavernous holes for nostrils, while his eyes, peeping out from under bristling brows, were small and wicked.

All over his face and neck, and extending down to his breast, was a coarse growth of stiff red hair.

The manager finished his harangue over Herman, the Ossified Man, pictures of whom a small boy began offering to the crowd for the sum of ten cents each.

“Next, and last, I call your attention, ladies and gentlemen, to Bobo, the wild man from Borneo,” began the exhibitor.

He was always glad when he came to Bobo, partly because he was the last freak to describe, and partly because the wild man always acted his part so well.

The crowd rushed from in front of the platform on which the Ossified Man had been exhibited.

“Don’t get so near there, boy,” shouted one of the attendants to a venturesome youth; “the wild man is liable to grab you. He killed a man that way last week.”

Stetson began his lurid tale of the fierce struggle which had taken place when the wild man was captured, and the crowd of country people listened open mouthed.

“Throwing this net about his head and shoulders, we succeeded in getting the creature to the ground,” droned Stetson in a sing-song voice.

This was Bobo’s cue. He yawned, exposing a set of yellow fangs, at the sight of which the small boy in the front row turned a little pale, and tried to work his way back into the crowd.

Then Bobo growled. Bobo was proud of that growl. It had taken him weeks to acquire it. Beginning with a kind of guttural rumbling in his throat, he worked himself up gradually, and ended with a ferocious howl.

“The wild man is hungry, you see,” said Stetson; and taking a piece of raw meat from under the wagon, he held it up to view.

Bobo immediately sprang at the bars of his cage, and rattled them loudly, chattering fiercely meanwhile.

The crowd fell back, leaving a clear space in front of the cage; and the wild man, reaching a hairy arm out between the iron bars, seized the meat, and crawling to a corner, buried his teeth in the bloody shank.

“This concludes the entertainment,” shouted Stetson, and the crowd reluctantly began to file out of the tent.

Two months later, while Poole Brothers’ amalgamated shows were exhibiting in Vermont, Murphy, one of the side-show attendants, came to Stetson, and informed him mysteriously that Bobo was acting queer.

“He don’t get out of his cage after the show’s over in the afternoon like he used to, but stays there till the evening performance.”

“Nothing queer about that as I can see,” answered Stetson carelessly. “He’s been putting more life than usual into the part lately, and it probably tires him. What’s the difference whether he rests in his cage or goes over to the car? You’re probably kicking because you have to bring his supper to him.”

“He used to wash the make-up off his face between the two shows,” persisted Murphy. “But now he keeps it on from ten in the morning till night.”

“Well, you never take the trouble to wash the ordinary every-day dirt and grease off your face, and I don’t believe you ever would clean up if it took you the time it does Bobo,” replied Stetson irritably, and Murphy retired, muttering.

But the other freaks had noticed a change in the wild man, too. Between performances Bobo used to play penny ante with the fat man and the bearded lady, both of which gentlemen now tried in vain to lure him into a game.

Saturday nights, also, when the last show for the week was over, the freaks sometimes had a little “feed,” and formerly Bobo had been one of the most jovial spirits. Lately, however, he refused to attend any of these gatherings, and spent most of his time alone.

As Stetson said, though, the freaks were always complaining about one another, so little attention was paid to the grumbling in the side-show tent.

The management couldn’t afford to offend Bobo, for there was no denying that the wild man was the star attraction. He was doing better work than he ever had done before. He didn’t wait for the manager to come to him to begin acting; but as soon as the crowd appeared, he was growling and tearing away at the bars of his cage.

The other freaks complained; for even when the dog-faced boy was making his worst grimaces during Stetson’s description of him, most of the audience preferred standing in front of the wild man’s cage watching his antics.

One Sunday night the attendant, who had been before rebuffed, again sought out Stetson with a new tale of woe.

“Bobo sleeps in his cage every night now,” he declared, “and he’s been in there all day to-day.”

“Perhaps he’s sick,” said Stetson, but he didn’t believe it.

He himself had noticed a change of late in the wild man. The meat, which had been thrown in to him, had formerly been taken out untouched and given to the lions; but lately there hadn’t been any meat left.

“He ain’t sick, neither,” declared Murphy, “but he’s too damn ugly to live. He tried to bite me when I changed the water in his dish; and yesterday, when Skoggy brought him a newspaper like he used to, to show him the stock report, Bobo tore it to pieces, and tried to hit Skoggy with that bar that’s loose in his cage.

Stetson consulted with Poole Brothers, and that night the three men went to the side-show tent, which was up in readiness for the Monday’s performance.

They found Bobo lying asleep in his cage. He still had on his make-up, but some way he didn’t look natural to the Poole Brothers. They didn’t go to the side-show tent very often, and it had been over two months since they had seen the wild man.

The hair on his arms and breast was thicker than it used to be, and his teeth seemed longer and yellower.

Stetson opened the door of the cage and called, “Wake up, Pat. It’s time for supper.”

The wild man opened his eyes quickly, and snarled like a dog which has been roused suddenly.

“It’s time for supper,” repeated Stetson, stepping back and clasping his cane a little tighter.

Bobo seized the little iron dish in which they brought him water, and started to hurl it at the speaker; but noticing suddenly who it was, he only growled, “Don’t want no more supper; just had mine.”

The younger Poole brother looked at a half gnawed bone lying on the bottom of the cage, and muttered something which nobody heard.

“Well, you’re not going to stay here all night, are you?” persisted Stetson.

Bobo ran to the door of his cage and seized the bars, shaking them as he did when the show was on.

“Why in hell can’t you leave me alone?” he screamed. “What do you care where I sleep? Don’t I do my work? And don’t I earn my pay? Then what you kicking about? Git along, and leave me alone; I’m sleepy.”

Stetson looked at the two Poole brothers, one of whom made a sign, and the three men withdrew.

“Looks as if we’d have the genuine article, instead of a fake, in a week or two more,” observed the elder Poole to the manager.

He had been in the show business for some years, and wasn’t easily shocked.

During the next few weeks the freaks had many causes for complaint. The Bearded Lady claimed that Bobo had spit at him when he went by the cage. But the Bearded Lady was a man of sensitive disposition, and easily offended.

There were other things more serious, however. Mlle. Mille, one of the albinos, showed Stetson a black and blue spot on her arm where the wild man had struck her when she was putting on her wig, and the snake charmer threatened to leave the show if Bobo was not locked in his cage.

One night, therefore, when the wild man was asleep, three of the attendants stole into the tent and snapped a couple of strong padlocks through the staple in the door.

It was a good thing that they did; for the next day Bobo had a crazy fit before the show opened up, during which he tried to tear his cage to pieces. It proved a great attraction, though; for the country people outside heard him raving, and the tent was soon packed.

He stopped speaking to any one after that, and refused to answer when spoken to. He stayed in his cage all the time, sleeping there nights, and never touching the cooked food sent him from the kitchen, but there was never any meat left over for the lions.

The Royal Roman Hippodrome and Three Ring Circus played to remarkably good business all summer, and finally brought up at the old winter quarters in New York.

One of the first visitors upon their arrival there was Mrs. Patsy McLockin, who came to see what in the world had happened to her husband, for she hadn’t heard a word from him for over two months.

Stetson took her into the room where workmen were getting every thing in order; for the show was to begin its winter indoor engagement next day.

In his cage in one corner, gnawing a bloody shank of meat, crouched Bobo. Stetson took the woman over to the cage; and Mrs. McLockin, after looking at the wild man for a few seconds, broke out sobbing.

“You’ve gone and made him crazy, you have,” she wailed. “Patsy, dear, don’t you know your old woman?”

But Bobo, the wild man, continued crunching his bone, and paid no attention to the woman in front of his cage. The manager stole out of the room softly, and left them together. There was nothing he could do.

Each week he had gone to Bobo’s cage, and tried to talk to the wild man, telling him that he had better give up the business and settle down somewhere. But the wild man never paid any attention to him; and when one day Poole Brothers tried to take him out of his cage by force, one man was killed and Stetson himself seriously injured, so that had to be given up.

All that winter the side show connected with Poole Brothers’ Royal Roman Hippodrome and Three Ring Circus played to packed houses; and probably no one paid any particular attention to a sad-faced Irish woman of middle age who spent most of the time standing in front of the cage of Bobo, the wild man, weeping silently.

AT THE END OF THE ROAD.

AT THE END OF THE ROAD.

At first the road was smooth and level; there were no hills, and The Man had many companions. They laughed with him and made merry, and there was no thought of care.

“’Tis a pleasant life,” murmured The Man; but even as he said the words he wondered half fearfully if it could last, if the country through which they passed would always be as pleasant.

Gradually the way became harder. Quite often The Man was compelled to pause for breath, for there were difficult places to get over; and when he turned for assistance to the companions who had laughed and jested with him but a little while before, he found that they had passed just beyond calling distance. At least they seemed not to hear him, for they did not stop. But the way was not all hilly; and when he came to the smoother places The Man hurried on faster than before, and, catching up with his companions, was welcomed by them, and they all made merry once more.

The smoother places became rarer, however, and The Man found himself alone many times, till one day he was joined by a new companion.

“He will be like the others,” said The Man bitterly: “he will not stay with me.”

But the other heard him. “Do not fear,” he answered, “I will stay with you to the journey’s end. I will never leave you.”

Nevertheless, The Man did not like his new companion. He was not like the others. He never jested and made merry, and after that first time he did not speak again. He was gaunt and thin, and was clothed in rags; but he stayed with The Man when the others ran on ahead or lagged behind.

One day when The Man was weary, for there was no longer any one to cheer him, and the way had become very hard, he plucked up courage to speak to his silent companion again.

“’Tis true you do not leave me like the rest,” he said; “they all deserted me when we left the pleasant country; but I do not know you yet. If we must travel together we should get better acquainted.”

“Mine is not a pleasant name, and few care to know me better than necessity compels,” answered the Silent One; “but had you waited a little longer you would not have needed to ask. I am known by many names, but those who know me best call me Poverty.”

The Man picked himself up from where he had thrown himself to rest, and hurried on, trying to leave his companion behind. But the one in rags followed close, and when The Man stumbled and fell, exhausted by his exertions, the other was just at his heels.

And about this time The Man noticed that a third wayfarer had joined them. He could not see the new comer’s face, however, for he always kept a little way behind; and there seemed to be a kind of shroud-like hood over his head.

There were no longer any easy stretches in the road, and The Man moved slowly. Many times he stumbled and fell, and each time it was longer before he rose again. He wondered, but dared not ask the name of the new arrival who had moved nearer, and was now but a few steps behind.

At last The Man came to a part of the way more difficult than any before; and he lay down for a few minutes to rest. After a time he tried to go on, but could not. He was too weak, and his two companions seemed to be conspiring to hold him back. He summoned all his strength, and made one last effort to go on. At first he seemed to advance a little, but the hand of The Ragged One thrust him back. He stumbled, fell, rose again, and staggered on a few steps, then fell once more and could not rise.

“This is the end,” he heard the Silent One saying; “and I have kept my word; I am still with you.”

There was a sound of footsteps approaching stealthily, and The Man opened his eyes with an effort. The companion who had always lagged behind was advancing swiftly, and the black hood was drawn away from his face.

Painfully The Man raised himself on his elbow and looked at the figure for a second, then fell back.

“How strange that I did not know you before,” he muttered faintly, for he had seen the other’s face, and recognized that it was Death.

THE SPACE ANNIHILATOR.

THE SPACE ANNIHILATOR.[3]