One month later Colegrave was admitted into a barred, heavily-guarded room, in which a small, surly looking man sat hunched on a stool. The head of the man was shaved and his trouser legs were split. When he saw Colegrave his ugly yellow teeth showed in a grin.
“Everything’s jake, isn’t it?” he asked.
“Be careful of what you say,” Colegrave murmured. “Yes, everything’s jake. The last act takes place tonight when the part of me that is you dies. It is strange that I must die to live, but that is the fact.”
Little more was said. When Colegrave left some minutes later, he felt he was leaving a part of himself. But this thought only elated him. It was part of himself that he could well do without, now that its usefulness was over. It was like a man with a withered arm having it amputated. With the death of his subconscious manifestation, he would be free forever to live his own life, with the position and power that his money would assure him.
At twelve o’clock that night Colegrave was seated in a smart night club, formally attired in evening clothes, a magnum of the finest quality champagne set before him.
Sweet strains of music floated through the smoke-laden air, and the dulcet laughter of pretty girls caressed his ears.
This was the life that would be his to enjoy completely in just exactly — he glanced at his watch — two more minutes.
The execution was scheduled for 12:03.
He poured himself a drink of the sparkling wine and lighted a cigarette. In a minute and a half he would be released forever from all worries. He watched the second hand of his wrist watch complete one circle and start on the next. Just a matter of seconds now...
As the second hand started on the last quarter of the minute, Colegrave rose to his feet, glass in hand. It was only fitting that he drink a toast to the exit of his secondary nature.
He was raising his glass as the second hand swept past 12:03.
“A toast to one who—”
They were his last words.
A bolt of white-hot pain seemed to crash into his brain, even as the words echoed in his ears.[5] The glass in his hand splintered as his hand closed spasmodically, and the wine splashed over his shirt front.
Then he crashed to the floor.
A woman screamed, and the music jerked to a ragged stop. A crowd clustered about Colegrave’s lifeless figure, until the manager arrived and had the body carried to his office.
Then the police were called.
The coroner called it a heart attack, although he said it should more accurately be called a mind attack. The tissues of the brain were seared and shattered into shapeless shreds.
From the standpoint of the police there was one very fortunate angle to the mysterious death. For, when a certain safety deposit box corporation learned of it, they handed to the guardians of the law a document which convicted beyond all doubt a certain Mr. Ruzzoni as being behind the double killing of the mayor and the district attorney.
Ruzzoni, however, saved the state a job by committing suicide while the police were smashing in the door of his apartment.
Bertie and the Black Arts
First published in Fantastic Adventures, April 1942.
When the Moss wood college football special rattled to a stop in the sleepy little depot on the outskirts of Mosswood, it disgorged some three hundred pennant-waving, red-faced, drunkenly vociferous alumni. These blithe spirits swarmed over the waiting room, shouting to friends, yelling at cab drivers and in general behaving with the careless abandon that is the stamp of men released from the sober vigilance of their wives.
Among this carnival of happy souls Bertie Crimmins stood out like a beacon on a dark night. Or like a professional pallbearer in the midst of a New Year’s Eve celebration.
He was a tall, slim young man and, except for the pleasantly vacant look on his face he might have been considered handsome. He stood out in the crowd because he was wearing his hat instead of waving it wildly over his head. Also he was sober. On top of all this he carried no pennants and was not pounding someone on the back and shouting at the top of his voice.
There was, however, a certain wistful light in his eyes, as he surveyed the antics of his companions. Once, as the chorus of the Mosswood school song was being chanted by an inebriated and off-key quartet, his lips began to move automatically and the song almost poured forth of its own volition.
As he stood in the center of the depot looking about expectantly, a chubby, red-faced chap holding a bottle in one hand stumbled into him.
“Ssssorry,” he mumbled, swaying slightly. Then his eyes lighted with recognition. “My old pal, Bertie Crimmins!” he cried emotionally. “I didn’t know you were coming down for the ol’ game. Have a drink, pal, have a drink.”
He shoved the bottle toward Bertie.
Bertie looked at it longingly, but shook his head.
“I’m not using the stuff,” he said weakly.
His cock-eyed friend stared at him with incredulous disbelief.
“You don’t say,” he mumbled in astonishment. “You were the best ol’ rum pot in school when I was here. Member the time ol’ Prexy caught the two of us, blind drunk, in the girl’s dressing room at the Senior Prom? That was some time, wasn’t it?”
“Y — yes it was,” Bertie said hastily. He wiped his suddenly damp brow, and glanced nervously about the depot.
“You know sumpn’,” his drunken chum tittered, “I always wondered what ol’ Prexy was doing there, himself.”
In spite of conscience, Bertie found himself warming to the subject.
“Was odd, wasn’t it?” he said. “Do you suppose the old bounder—”
“Hello, Bertrand,” a soft voice beside him said.
Bertie froze in mid-sentence. At his side was a slim, lovely blonde girl with deep blue eyes. There was just a touch of frost in those lovely eyes now.
“Darling,” Bertie cried nervously. “You’re looking wonderful. Positively radiant. Let’s go outside. Out in the clean, fresh air. Away from these — er — gross people.”
He turned to the chubby drunk and said firmly,
“There are no more trains arriving today, my good man. That’s all you wanted to know, is it not?”
Without waiting for an answer, he grabbed the lovely blonde girl by the arm and towed her out of the depot into the fresh air.
There he breathed deeply, not for health’s sake, but from sheer relief.
Ann Turner, the lovely blonde girl, regarded him dubiously.
“Bertie, dear,” she said, “you haven’t broken any of your promises have you?”
“Silly girl,” Bertie laughed. “I have been the epitome of respectability these last two months.”
“No drinking?”
“Not a drop.”
“Poker?”
“Certainly not.”
“Horses?”
“My dear little cherub, I haven’t even nodded to a milkman’s horse. That should prove that I can be the steady, reliable type, what?”
Bertie Crimmins’ problem was not a new one. In college he had been a happy, care-free soul and the stigma of his undergraduate days had a nasty way of sticking to him. When he had met The Girl, it turned out that she had heard of his primrosy path and, as a result, was dubious about the double harness idea he had suggested one moonlight night. So he had been put on probation and, to his credit, he had survived the ordeal manfully.
“You do look different,” Ann said thoughtfully. “You have a very respectable look in your eyes.”
Inwardly, Bertie sighed. He had slipped far if his stare at a luscious girl could be described as respectable. But he said:
5
What Colegrave, for all his cleverness, didn’t realize, was that his own subconscious mind would be shattered in the electric chair. When he accomplished the physical cleavage between his dual personality, his own subconscious intellect activated the body of his secondary nature. Thus when the electric current shot through the body of the mayor and the district attorney’s assassin, it was the mind of Colegrave that was destroyed by the bolt.