he buried it in his cellar, and he cleaned up the blood the following morning. But there was one ghastly difference: Emil Drukker had committed his crime with full purposeful foreknowledge, whereas I had committed my crime under hypnotic inducement!

“There is no other answer for what has happened in these last six weeks. I have racked my brain to find another solution, but there is none. I am being hypnotized by some unexplainable force, and once each week I come under the power of this evil which directs and commands my being. Last night I went to bed with the full knowledge of what would occur during the night. That is why I locked you in your room. This morning when I awakened I found the head exactly where the other five had lain; then I carried it to the basement and buried it. I cleaned up the blood and burned the towel.

“If you are numbed with horror, try to imagine how I feel about it. Six crimes in six weeks! And I can only thank merciful God that it will end with only one more. Perhaps it is ended now. That German servant who loaned me the diary said it would be only six or seven.”

“Do you think the police will believe all of this?” I demanded. “What you have told me has no sane explanation. It—it’s demonism!”

Carse smiled pitiably. “There are more things in heaven and earth,” he began; then he heaved his shoulders as if flinging off an attempt at levity. “The human mind is a strange organ, and no man can explain its mysteries. I have seen too much of atavism to ridicule any theories. There is nothing we can do but wait and hope that the German servant’s prediction is true. Six or seven. Six—or seven?”

“Do you mean you expect me to grant you leniency?” I exclaimed. “Great heavens, Carse, there have been six horrible murders! Society demands a reckoning.”

“I have atoned enough for ten times six!” he cried. “Have you no soul in you? The crimes will stop now. The German said they would, and everything else he predicted has come true. As my lifelong friend it is your duty to see me through.”

“But those six——”

“No man can bring them back to life, but I am still a living man and you must save me. I shall divide my estate among the families of the six, and I swear to you that I shall never open a book on criminology again. You must do it—you must!”

“Do you honestly believe it is over?” I asked hoarsely.

“I do; with all my heart and soul, I do!”

“But you would say that anyway,” I cried. “Suppose there is a Number Seven? The blood will be upon my hands as well as yours. It is an awful responsibility, Carse. There must be no more.”

“There won’t be. I swear there won’t be!”

He threw himself at me in an hysterical outburst of emotion. He tried to smile through the tears in his eyes, but the sight was so awful that I turned my head.

“I am still unconvinced,” I said grimly. “The possibility of Number Seven is too important to overlook. Let me see Drukker’s diary.”

“Why?” he backed away and stared at me. “Why do you want to read the diary?”

“I want to read account Number Seven.”

Carse came forward again and grabbed my arm. He shook it. “What good will that do?” he asked anxiously, “if there are only six of them? Besides, it’s not a book you ought to read.”

“Give me the diary!” I demanded again.

He scowled at me for a moment; then, shrugging, he reached into his pocket and withdrew a small leather-bound book. It was well worn, as if by many thumbs, and in faded gold letters across the cover were the words: Personal Diary of Emil Drukker, J. U. D.

“Sit down,” I commanded. “And try to keep your nerves together. I shall do everything I can for you.”

He backed away and dropped into a chair, his eyes fastened upon me in a look of almost majestic joy. And yet there was an undertone in his expression which I could not define. There was defiance there ... and fear. One of his hands rested on the near-by table, less than two feet from the hilt of the butcher knife, and the fingers of that hand twitched nervously.

With an odd sense of uneasiness I flicked open the first several pages of the book and skimmed through the contents. My German was poor, yet I was able to understand the significance of what Emil Drukker had written in his 448 large, scrawling hand. I read the first six accounts, then stared at Carse in amazement. His six crimes and Drukker’s first six were so identical they might have been conscious reproductions. In all cases the victims were the same sex, the same age, and were in the same general walk of life. I then turned to account Number Seven and after reading a few wretched lines I gasped with horror: it was a seven-year-old girl!

Carse was on his feet, his jaw grim and determined. He stared fiercely at me, waiting my response.

“Carse,” I muttered dazedly, “it—it——”

“You can’t back out,” he cried as he stepped toward me. “There will be no seven, I tell you. It’s ended on six. I swear it to you!”

“No,” I said, “I cannot permit such a risk. Did you read account Number Seven? He not only cut off the head, but he dismembered——”

“You can’t back out!” he screamed as he shook my arm. “You can’t, you can’t!”

“But Carse, this is a girl—a mere child. Don’t you realize it would be unpardonable even for you? No, I can never take such a risk. I must turn you over to the police.”

Carse slapped me viciously, then stumbled back against the table. His face was a mask of suffused blood, his eyes wild with desperation.

“Damn you!” he cried savagely. “You are no friend; you’re a cheat, a betrayer!”

Suddenly his groping fingers touched the butcher knife and he drew himself taut. His fingers wound around the hilt like slowly moving worms. For a moment there was scarcely a breath between us; then he lifted his arm and brought the knife slowly out before him. I watched, horror-stricken, unable to lift my feet from the floor. A numbing paralysis of fright seemed to come over me.

“Carse, Carse!” I muttered.

He didn’t hear me; his body was tensed for the deadly spring that would bring him down upon my throat. I saw a ripple of galvanizing energy race through his hands; then I managed an outcry. At the same instant he was in the air.

There is no need for me to relate the events which followed; for the newspapers had assiduously described the capture and arrest of Carse, and his subsequent history, brief as it was, has become public property. To my dying day I shall carry the five-inch scar along my cheek where his knife descended upon me, and I can never cease to be thankful for that one outburst of absolute fear which tore from my lips and attracted a passing policeman; otherwise I might have been Number Seven in the grim line of epitaphs that marked the close of this fantastic case. Only by bludgeoning Carse with his stick could the officer overcome him, and it was necessary to keep him in a straitjacket until the hour of his execution.

It is a curious fact that the psychiatrists who examined Carse, several of them his former pupils, could not find him unbalanced enough to be irresponsible for his crimes. Those long and tiring vigils in the mental clinic will haunt me for life; there was no end to their searching and probing of his subconscious mind, no end to the tests and questions, the examinations and analyses which ended hopelessly against him. But even if they had found him insane, violently and homicidally insane, they would not have dared report such a finding to the court. Society demanded