A dull, numbing cruciation circulated through his head. He felt bloated . . . coarse and running with internal mucus. His mouth was dry, his gums sore and stinging.
He tightened his hands as he lunged for the door. "Dad," he cried, and he heard his voice breaking in his throat. Sunlight filtered through the window at the top of the stairs. The air was hot and dry, and carried in it a mild odor of decay.
Arthur suddenly drew back at that odor—drew back with a gasp of awful fear. For he recognized it—that stench, the heaviness of his blood, the rawness of his tongue and gums. . . . Age-long it seemed, yet rising like a spirit in his memory. All of these things he had known and felt before.
He leaned against the banister, and half slid, half stumbled down the stairs. . . . His father had died during the night. He lay like a waxen figure tied to his bed, his face done up in knots.
Arthur stood dumbly at the foot of the bed for only a few seconds; then he went back upstairs to his room.
Almost immediately he emptied both barrels of the shotgun into his head.
The tragedy at Timber lake was discovered accidentally three days later, A party of fishermen, upon finding the two bodies, notified state authorities, and an investigation was directly under way.
Arthur Duryea had undoubtedly met death at his own hands. The condition of his wounds, and the manner with which he held the lethal weapon, at once foreclosed the suspicion of any foul play.
But the death of Doctor Henry Duryea confronted the police with an inexplicable mystery; for his trussed-up body, unscathed except for two jagged holes over the jugular vein, had been drained of all its blood.
The autopsy protocol of Henry Duryea laid death to "undetermined causes," and it was not until the yellow tabloids commenced an investigation into the Duryea family history that the incredible and fantastic explanations were offered to the public.
Obviously such talk was held in popular contempt; yet in view of the controversial war which followed, the authorities considered it expedient to consign both Duryeas to the crematory. . . .
