those who were responsible for the hellish crime enjoyed themselves and went unpunished. The minutes seemed to drag into hours, as I lay there struggling for breath.
Suddenly, out of the horrible black stillness, I heard a noise above me. Listening, with every racked nerve on edge, I heard it come nearer—nearer. At first I could not make it out—could not understand—and then, suddenly, the truth dawned upon me with a horrible intensity: The body snatchers were after me for the dissecting-room!
I tried to cry out, but was unable to make a sound, because of my stifling condition. They reached the coffin, and I heard the shovel scraping against it. Then I felt myself being slowly lifted upward, and the coffin was dumped on the ground.
Now I heard a voice, and my blood ran cold, for it was the voice of Dr. Langley.
"The drug was an Oriental one," he was saying. "It causes a semblance of death that lasts a long time, but he probably died a few minutes after he was buried. I am anxious to dissect to see what effect such a drug has on the human body!"
And then, with a terrible shock, I heard the voice of my wife:
"I don't care. Do as you wish. I hated him from the moment he refused to give me a divorce. I could even watch you cut up his body!"
I struggled to rise in the coffin, gasping for the breath of life, and then the lid was pried off, and, summoning all my dying strength, I rose to my feet, waving my arm wildly back and forth, and inhaling a great breath of life-giving night air.
The doctor let the shovel fall to the ground without a word, and staggered back and sank to his knees, while my wife gave a hideous scream of terror. Then she snatched a knife from his kit of dissecting instruments and drew the razor-sharp blade across her throat. She then threw herself upon the prostrate doctor, her blood drenching his body.
My senses reeling. I staggered forward, tripped over my coffin and fell swooning to the ground.
None believe my story. Neither will you. I have told it to them all, but they will not believe it.
I am in a hospital, where they tell me I have been for several days. It is a prison hospital, where guards in uniform patrol the corridors, lest even the sick try to escape.
They ask me if I cannot remember that I came home that night from the club in a blind frenzy of drink and found my wife and Dr. Langley together. They tell me that I choked him with such ferocity and strength that my fingers broke into the flesh of his neck. They tell me that my wife, screaming with terror, tried to escape, and that, just as the people in the adjoining apartment burst into the room, I seized a razor from the bureau and slashed her throat from ear to ear, and threw her body, with the blood streaming from the wound, across that of the doctor.
Are they going to hang me for this double crime I did not commit?
They will not believe my story. Yet every detail of it is as clear to me as the stars that shine in the heavens.
