The Black Patch
(Continued from page 18)
ory the horrid thought that I had driven a human being to his death.
Then, filled with forebodings as to the identity of the body over which I had stumbled earlier in the night, I started to return. When I reached the house it was a long time before I could summon courage to enter. Once inside, however, I gained confidence and hastened upstairs.
The body was gone from the hall. But in the small room at one end—a mere closet—I found what I was looking for: the body of the man who had fallen in the struggle in the night—evidently he had dragged himself thither. His heart was still beating, and I carried him down stairs. He was heavy, and I groaned with relief as the weight slipped from my arms to the floor.
Then I looked at the face. Never shall I forget it.
It was my host! The black patch was displaced. It had covered a perfectly good eye!
I MUST have swooned at the sight, for the next I knew there were many men about me. They came from the village and had been notified by the old negress.
I was taken into custody and lodged for three weary hours in a ridiculously small place they called a "lock-up." At the end of that time I was led before a magistrate who took my statement.
Next morning I was informed that the body of David Warren had been found in the ravine. It confirmed my worst fears, I had driven to his death my own cousin!
That day the authorities obtained a confession from the man who had worn the black patch. He was unknown to them and stated that his name was Douglass. For about three months he had been employed by David Warren as an assistant in laboratory work. Having opened by mistake the first letter from our solicitor, Douglass learned of the legacy and kept my cousin in ignorance of it.
For two months he had confined David Warren under circumstances of the greatest cruelty in the little closet at the end of the hall. He insured the silence of the old negress by threats of death.
How Warren escaped from his room Douglass could not say. He suspected that the negress finally had dared to unlock the door. In any event, my cousin met Douglass in the dark just as the latter stepped from my room after his futile attempt to steal the gold. Then ensued the struggle in the hallway that I had heard and in which Warren stabbed the impostor with a knife—a wound that later resulted in the death of the criminal.
Although aware that we had never seen our Canadian cousin, Douglass wore the black patch fearing that we might know that David Warren had lost an eye.
After the inquest I hurried, shaken and trembling, to the hotel and packed the stolen Gladstone which had been found and returned to me. Then, feeling that I had a sufficiently vivid impression of America, I purchased a draft with the gold and started on the long journey home.
BLACK MAGIC
(Continued from page 34)
Horrible as was the drama of Gilles de Laval, the same horrors recur throughout the history of the Middle Ages, wherever Black Magic is found.
Gilles de Laval, with Prelati and Sille, was found guilty by the court and burned alive in the pre de la Magdeline, near Nantes; he obtained permission to go to the execution with all the pageantry that had accompanied him during life, as if he wished to involve in the ignominy of his downfall the ostentation and cupidity by which he had been so utterly degraded and lost.
