Harold Ward

“ Something told me to flee; but I shook off the feeling as unworthy a man of my profession and stood my ground. Had I but obeyed that impulse I would have been a happier man today!
Doctor Lessman, clad in a faded bathrobe, his forefinger between the pages of the volume he had been reading, greeted me. For an instant his gaze traveled over me from head to foot, then went past me as if seeking my means of approach. ”

“ Lessman must have read my thoughts, for he pressed the bell which summoned her to his side.
"One glimpse of Meta Vinetta and I was lost.
"Lessman introduced me to her as his sister. I know now that she is more to him than that—that she is his soul mate, his affinity. She is his accomplice in all the devilish schemes which incubate within his wondrous brain.
"Together they can rule the worid. Lessman holds that the body is a shell, a house built only to hold the soul, deriving its power from the spirit, the will. ”

“ Yet Lessman's was the soul that inhabited it. As a man sees his face in a mirror, so did I see my face before me. I hurled my stolen body to the floor. Screaming with rage, I showered blow after blow upon it. ”

“ True, lives have been destroyed. But what is life? Your man-made theology teaches you that life is but a span of a few years in eternity; you snap the cord which binds you to this earth, and immediately you enter the paradise which your God has prepared for you. Why, then, prolong matters? I, rather than being the monster you think me to be, am a benefactor to the human race. ”

“ Meta is holding a flashlight—And yet it is not Meta! It is another—a girl, fair-haired, sweet of face—yet her will is the will of Meta. Meta's is the driving force behind her actions, just as my body is driven onward by the iron will of the Bodymaster . . . .
"Some one is approaching. We step behind the curtain. He enters and snaps on the light. At sight of the open safe, he turns. He is about to give the alar. . . . There is a knife in my hand. . . . I strike! God in Heaven! I have killed him! . . . . We seize the jewels from the safe and escape. ”

“ I felt the will of Lessman commanding me to desist. Yet the love of a woman was stronger than his power. I gouged at the gleaming eyes which stared up into mine, the while I choked at the throat—my throat—which lay beneath my fingers.
"The woman was screaming. I knew that it was Meta who was cursing me, who sought to pull me from my victim. Yet it was the body of the unnamed girl I loved, her face contorted into a frenzy of malignancy, who showered blow after blow upon my bared head. . . . . ”

“ Then he dropped to the floor of the machine as if hurled by unseen hands.
"He is here! The Bodymaster is here!" he shrieked. "Drive—for the love of God, dr——"
The words ended in a dull, throaty gurgle as he writhed upon the floor of the machine at the other's feet. The driver, bewildered by the strange scene, threw in the clutch, and the machine dashed madly down the pavement.
The young man was on his back now, his knees drawn up, his face ghastly and twisted, his eyes bulging, his fingers clawing as if unseen hands were gripping at his throat. ”

“ Every man who dies in my hands before his allotted time has that much longer to spend in heaven.'
"He leaned back in his chair and laughed mirthlessly for an instant.
"'I am not here to argue the right or wrong of the thing, however,' he continued. 'I am a man born to rule; I would rather be a big devil in hell than a little angel in heaven—if there be such places as heaven and hell, which I greatly doubt.
"'I need help in my work—my experiments. True, I have Meta—but she is only a weak woman. I need others—men whom I can teach—men whom I can trust—men with the will to conquer. ”

“ ANOTHER ENTRY IN THE DIARY.
"LAST night I killed a man. Of this I am almost certain. I, a man sworn to avenge crime and to track down criminals, have the brand of Cain upon my brow. My hands are dripping with blood. I should be in a cell in murderers' row, waiting for an avenging law to hang me, instead of breathing the air of freedom. But am I free? No! A thousand times no! I am as much a prisoner as I would be behind the bars of a felon's cage.
"As one watches a motion picture thrown upon the silver screen, I see myself with Meta by my side . ”

“ Thank God for that!
"Yet even as I write I know that The Bodymaster is planning my death. He has it within his power to drive my soul from out my body—to usurp this tenement of clay with his own polluted brain. How he works his wonders I will describe later if I am able. It is hard for me to think consecutively.
"Lessman's is the greatest brain, his the most wonderful intellect, the world has ever known. His is the accumulated wisdom of the centuries—since Jesus of Nazareth trod this earth there has been none who could accomplish the wonders he has performed. ”

“ Lessman is too far in advance of his time. Yet there is a possibility that a few centuries hence some eye may read these lines and wonder how the men of today could be so dense.
"I am no longer afraid of death. I know now that such fear is only a superstitious idea. There is no such thing as death. That which we term death is but a step from one life to another. Lessman has taught me that life is a cycle and that when we leave it we enter into another existence, better or worse than the one we are quitting in accordance with our own actions. ”

“ I took a degree at Princeton before I took up the business of crime detection. But my knowledge is elementary compared with that of Lessman. But I am getting away from my subject.
"Under the spell of his eloquence, I forgot that I was the servant and he the master—that I was merely a prisoner, subservient to my jailor's will. For an hour we discussed the subject; I was as interested as he. There is, he claims, no heights to which man can not climb, providing he so wills. To him man is—or should be—absolutely the master of his own body and soul. ”

“ Who knows to what steps he will go while she is under his devilish influence?
"Meta, too, is showing her teeth at poor Avis. Heretofore she has shielded the innocent girl to a certain extent. Of that I am certain, and Avis also believes it. But of late she has acted strangely, even showing her temper on several occasions. Lessman treated her at such times with amused contempt. He knows the absolute hold that he has over her.
"But she may injure my loved one. How, I do not know. She is a woman capable of anything. And the 'green-eyed monster' has neither brains nor conscience. ”

“ Did such a man as The Bodymaster really exist? Or was it only the writhing of my tortured imagination which transformed Doctor Darius Lessman, theologist and philanthropist, into a fiend incarnate? His lair is gone. A pile of charred ruins now occupies the place where it stood. Its inmates died with it. The Bodymaster is no more. But is he really dead?
Time alone will tell. The records of the police department of the City of New York will bear out my story up to a certain point. ”

“ The Bodymaster evidently bears me no ill will, for last night Avis and I dined with him. Ordinarily, we are fed like animals, the food served out to us by a deaf and dumb mulatto who shoves the edibles through the bars to those who are too dangerous to be allowed outside their cells, while such of us as Lessman evidently considers harmless are oceasionally permitted to dine at a long, bare table in the hallway. Here we sit and wolf our food like swine, our only thought being to fill our bellies quickly, lest the others get more than their share of the meal. ”

“ And I—I, the only man who ever sent his soul hurtling through the realms of space to explore the mysteries of the great unknown—I must keep silent.
"The human mind refuses to believe what it does not understand. ”

“ John Duncan lies festering in a felon's cell, perhaps to stretch a hempen rope for a crime that Lessman committed. I must save him if I can. Yet who will believe me? Wise judges and learned counsel scoffed and jeered at what Duncan had to tell. What, then, will they say when they read these lines? I see them smile derisively and tap their bulging brows in token of my madness.
"Meta is the lure he used to hold me in his power. ”

“ Through the opening Meta stepped. She wore a kimona—a soft, silken, figured affair reminiscent of the Orient. I can only remember that beneath its folds protruded a glimpse of tiny, bare feet clad in the smallest of sandals.
"There are silences more eloquent than words. For an instant my eyes sought hers—deep, dark, lustrous, glowing like great pools of liquid fire. ”

“ JOHN DUNCAN was arrested, charged with the murder of the unknown young man.
He had no defense. The evidence was all against him. The body of the stranger had been found in his damaged car. Death was the result of strangulation. The marks of fingers were upon the dead man’s throat.
The defendant admitted that the deceased had been alive when he entered the machine. And the story he told was so strange, so unbelievable, that even his own attorney scoffed at it. How, then, could a judge believe his tale?
Doctor Darius Lessman was called upon to testify at the preliminary hearing. ”

“ Were I to make public what I know—even if it were possible—I would be derided, held up to ridicule by press and public. For, despite our vaunted civilization, we are still slaves to superstition and ignorance, ever ready like those of old, to strike down one who dares utter the truth. ”

“ And who can blame them? Secure behind the ramparts of the grave's grim silence, they can defy the world to prove them wrong. Their weird hypotheses bring them gold, power and position in the world of letters. ”

“ A dream must have some foundation.
FROM THE DIARY.
"THE unforeseen has come to pass. That which I have just witnessed God never intended that mortal eyes should see. At the very thought of it my body trembles and every nerve tingles as if from electric shock.
"Where is Lessman? Did the Bodymaster and his female accomplice perish in the ruins of their own diabolical art? I hope so. It is better that I—that all of us—die of starvation, locked as we are in this horrible den, than that others should share the fate which has been meted out to us. ”

“ I have found that she has been with me through the ages—-my loved one, my affinity. In every period of the past she has accompanied me—just as she will in the future, until the time comes where Divine Intelligence brings all things to an end.
"Let me start at the beginning. No more do I live in a cell-like room, eating like an animal with the cattle whose brain power is not as great as mine. With Avie by my side, I dine in state with Lessman and Meta.
"The next evening, immediately after dinner, The Bodymaster summoned me to his library. He was anxious to commence his experiments. ”

“ Innocent men are being made to suffer for things that I have done.
"The police are on the lookout for a mysterious woman who has been seen often where strange crimes have been committed. Can it be that they—Lessman and Meta—are using Avis as they are using me? They both deny it. And Avis tells me that she has no recollection of such things. ”

“ Strange as it may appear, there is no record of these occasions in my diary. I can explain this only by the supposition that at such times Lessman withdrew his power over me, while on all other occasions I was, as I have said before, in a semi-somnambulic state.
THE DIARY CONTINUES.
"I AWOKE as one awakens from a horrible nightmare. My brain was as clear as a crystal. For an instant I imagined that I was in my own apartment—that she suffering I had gone through were but the conjurings of my own mind. ”

“ Luxury, clothes, good food—everything that a woman cares for—will be hers. Refuse, and she goes back to her cell—to the squalor and dirt and vermin from which came the poor wretch you have just seen.
"'You and you alone can save her!'
"He stopped dramatically. There was but one answer. May God in Heaven have mercy on my soul! I have become Lessman's partner in crime—an accomplice of that foul thing, the Bodymaster—I who have sworn to bring him to justice!
"But I have saved Avis." ”

“ Combining a smattering of psychology with a vivid imagination, they succeed in knocking together a readable, though unreliable, story, trusting to the general lack of knowledge to cover their untruthfulness. ”

“ To the best of his knowledge and belief, he testified, he had never seen the man in life. How he chanced to be wandering about the grounds of the Lessman sanitarium he did not know. He added to the already favorable opinion formed of him by the judge and jury by asking that he be allowed to pay the funeral expenses of the ragged stranger.
One man alone believed the tale told by John Duncan. He was Patrick Casey, captain in command of the homicide squad of the Metropolitan Police Department. ”

“ He, like myself, fell a victim to the wiles of Meta. Now he is at intervals a jibbering idiot.
"Several of the poor devils, Collins tells me, were placed here by distant relatives. Lessman, wearing the garb of sanctity, talks of his desire to cure them of their nervous disorder, and their relatives, poor fools, glad to rid themselves of the millstones around their necks, turn the wretched creatures over to him. He charges a low rate for their board and medical treatment.
"To one and all he is known as 'The Bodymaster.' He teaches them to call him that. They fear him like the very devil. ”

“ Without a man of your caliber my work—my experiments—must temporarily halt.
"'You love the golden-haired girl in yonder—and if I am not greatly mistaken, she loves you. She is yours—yours if you agree to my demands. Otherwise——'
"At a gesture the door opened. Into the room came the mulatto dragging a woman—a mere slip of a girl. In her eyes shone the light of insanity. ”

“ I realize this when I am alone, but when I am with Lessman I do his bidding gladly, happily.
"The papers are often filled with accounts of his work among the poorer classes. They say that he gives thousands of dollars away yearly. Little do they suspect that it is money that he has secured through crime—that he interests himself among the poor only because he occasionally is able to secure some new type of human brain upon whom he can work his nefarious experiments."
ANOTHER EXTRACT.
"Damn the Bodymaster! I hate him! His hold over me is absolute—supreme. ”

“ Yet he has a hazy recollection of having at one time done Lessman’s bidding. Nor have I learned the name of the poor fellow who met death in the heroic attempt to unmask The Bodymaster.
"The dean of Daggett College is dead—murdered! Another professor has been arrested as the murderer. Lessman showed me the paper this morning, chuckling over the gruesome details. There is absolutely no hope for the poor wretch who has been seized by the police, for the evidence is all against him. They will hang him, and the law will consider itself satisfied. I laughed with Lessman at the newspaper account. ”

“ Some of them are maniacs; and Lessman is holding them, I think, with the hope that he can cure their awful malady. For. as I understand it, he has no power over a diseased brain. It is only those that are normal that bow to his bidding.
"We have compared notes. Collins, of Chicago, has rational streaks during which he is able to talk freely. ”