“Of course,” he went on, “I thought first of my chemistry. He would come
to liquor like a hog to slop. A little potassium cyanide in it and he
would simply drop dead. There would be no symptoms of poison and the
coroner’s verdict would be ‘heart failure.’ But I never drank with him
and could not afford to make a special occasion for poisoning him. I
merely walked by.
“‘Hello,’ he grunted. ‘Looks like I’ll have to run you clear out of town
to get that mill. It isn’t half as easy to take away as your girl was.’
“Several heard it; and I wouldn’t have changed a word he said if I had
had the power.
“The very next day Lewis Dalton came into the mill and told me that
Lakeland was inquiring for me down in town. ‘And he’s sober today,’ he
added. What better could I ask? I shoved a wrench into my pocket—that
would be easily enough explained—and started immediately to town. I met
him just as I turned the corner on to Main Street. There were several
people in sight, but none within a hundred feet of us.”
* * * * *
Stowe’s expression had been gradually changing ever since he had begun
his story. Now he was completely transformed. He leaned far over the
table toward me, every muscle tense, his eyes snapping with a steely
glint that made me shudder to see. I took another drink of wine, but, for
the first time, he seemed to forget his completely. His lips drew in a
thin, straight, colorless line as he hissed with diabolic vehemence:
“I held out my hand to him civilly enough, but spoke before he took it.
I didn’t call him Lakeland that time either, I called him by his right
name, the name he’s deserved ever since this world has been cursed with
his damned green eyed face. His hand went straight into his coat under
his arm, but I was ready for him. I grabbed his wrist and shoved him
back against the wall. As soon as he saw the wrench in my other hand he
realized that I was going to kill him, and the dammed coward got so weak
in the legs that he didn’t even try to get away. He groaned like a calf
when I hit him right over the temple. But his eyes; they still had enough
of the devil in them to look at me even while he was falling, and say:
‘You’re not ahead yet, even with this.’”
He reached again for the green bottle and I offered no protest. Although
he had already had enough for two men, anything would be better than his
present condition.
“I didn’t even know that she was sick when I killed him,” he continued.
“When they told me, I went straight to the house. She was dying—dying,
and that brute was down in town just walking around the streets while she
was calling for him and begging him to come to her! She recognized me as
soon as I got into the room and seemed to know all.
“‘Where is Jim?’ she begged me to tell her.
“I didn’t answer her. I couldn’t.
“‘Will I have to go to him?’ she cried; and she never spoke again, and
never took her eyes from mine. She is still looking straight into my
eyes. And since she died,” he groaned, “her eyes have gotten as green as
his.”
“Then why, in the name of Heaven, have you made everything in the house
green?” I asked, reminded once more of our hideous surroundings.
“So that I couldn’t see them here. But every way I turn they are looking
straight at me. Sometimes they almost blaze when I try to look away.”
There was but one chance for him now: he must have some diversion. I
forgot that I had come to stay this time.
“Say, Thornt,” I suggested, “come with me for a few weeks hunting in the
mountains. It’s been two years since you and I were together on a trip.”
He sat for a moment in deep thought, his face twitching convulsively, his
eyes staring into vacancy.
“I am going to get out of this town,” he finally asserted.
I reached my hand across the table to him. He hesitated as though he
didn’t understand, but finally took it with the same grasp he had given
me on the street when he recognized my sympathy for him, and with the
same pathetic appeal in his eye, gripped it until I winced.
While I still pondered over the situation he straightened up resolutely,
as though he had finally reached a determination. With a desperate effort
to control the emotion that now convulsed his whole being, he addressed
me in a dry, husky voice:
“Frank, excuse me for a moment; and as we have always been friends, don’t
think hard of me tonight.”
I nodded an assent and he walked slowly to a door at the far side of the
room, passed through and closed it.
As soon as I found myself alone, the grim horror of my surroundings
attacked me with reinforced fury. The dread of my wretched host’s
insanity became more intense with him in the next room on a mysterious
mission, at which he had asked me not to be offended. Not even the
slightest sound proceeded now from the room he had entered. The
changeless monotony of the omnipresent green was enhanced by the
oppressive silence that reigned throughout the house, save for the
intolerable tick of the old clock that stood on the floor in the corner,
and seemed to pause indefinitely after each stroke, measuring eternity
instead of time.
I had never seen inside that room more than half a dozen times in my
whole life. There was nothing in there to go for. It had been used as a
store room for old furniture ever since I could remember. Finally the
suspense grew unbearable. I rose impulsively, went hastily to the door
through which he had passed and flung it open.
The room had been cleared of its junk and remodeled into a neat little
laboratory. Thornton stood at the far side of a table in the center of
the floor, pouring absinthe into a glass that was sitting perilously near
the edge. With the glass half full he placed the bottle on the table.
It tilted and rolled off; but he paid it no heed. Supporting himself
with one hand and raising the glass in the other, he seemed aware of my
presence for the first time.
“Frank,” he gasped huskily, “no one but you knows; and they will never
guess.”
I remembered in a flash, what he had said of his abandoned plan to poison
Lakeland, and realized; but before I could reach him he had drained the
glass. It slipped from his fingers and shattered on the floor. He stood
for a moment, staring on past me into space.
I grasped the edge of the table for support and felt the cold sweat start
on my brow and weakening limbs.
“Green as hell!” he muttered; and flinging his arms across his fixed
eyes, crumpled to the floor; then stiffened, stark and dead.
For minutes I stood motionless, powerless to move.
Finally, tossing a burning match into the spilt liquor, I answered his
last and only plea:
“No, Thornt, they shall never know.”
_Here’s Proof of the Love of the Weird and Mysterious in the Eighteenth
Century_