_An Amazing Novelette Filled With Weird Happenings_
_The_ BODYMASTER
_By_ Harold Ward
_Foreword_
_Perhaps I have been suffering from an hallucination. Possibly during the
weary months that I was lost to family and friends I was wandering about
the country, my brain in the ferment which afterward developed into the
attack of brain fever from which I have just recovered._
_Yet the maggots of madness inside my skull could not have created all
that I have seen. The proof of my sincerity lies in the fact that within
these pages I have confessed complicity in crimes for which the law
can hang me if it so desires. I am willing to admit that to the man of
science my tale bristles with errors—errors of interpretation, but not of
fact—for I am a detective, not a scientist._
_Did such a man as The Bodymaster really exist? Or was it only the
writhing of my tortured imagination which transformed Doctor Darius
Lessman, theologist and philanthropist, into a fiend incarnate? His lair
is gone. A pile of charred ruins now occupies the place where it stood.
Its inmates died with it. The Bodymaster is no more. But is he really
dead?_
_Time alone will tell. The records of the police department of the City
of New York will bear out my story up to a certain point. From there on
the affair is a puzzle to me. It is from this that the reader must draw
his own deductions. I can give only the facts._
_CHAPTER I._
Through the thick tangle of underbrush and trees, which surrounded Doctor
Darius Lessman’s private sanitarium just outside the city of New York,
dashed a young man, coatless, hatless, his shirt and trousers torn to
shreds by the thorns and brambles.
With blood streaming from a hundred scratches on his face and hands,
he presented a savage, almost inhuman, aspect as he leaped before the
automobile rapidly coming down the smooth asphalt pavement.
His face was drawn, haggard, contorted; and the snow-white hair, which
crowned his youthful face, was matted and unkempt. His eyes bulged from
their sockets like those of a maniac as he glared at the oncoming machine.
The afternoon, which was just drawing to a close, had been unusually hot;
the storm, hovering over the countryside, filled the air with a strange
foreboding—an unusual degree of sultriness. The sky was dull save when an
occasional flash of lightning tore through the lowering heavens. Not a
breath of wind. Not the rustle of a leaf. Yet the teeth of the man in the
roadway rattled like castanets, and upon his clammy brow the cold sweat
of terror stood out in beads.
The driver of the big machine brought it to a stop with a sharp grinding
of brakes. As he caught a glimpse of the ghastly face of the man before
him he involuntarily hunched his body back further into his seat.
“What the hell!” he exclaimed.
The other leaped to the side of the machine and fumbled clumsily—his
fingers shaking like those of a man with the palsy—at the catch of the
door.
“Quick!” he exclaimed hoarsely. “He—the Bodymaster—is after me! Get me to
the police station. I must—Oh, my God! I _must_ tell my story before he
seizes me again!”
He managed to open the door and stumble into the machine. The driver
turned to him.
“All right, old man,” he said in the soothing tone that one uses in
addressing a lunatic. “We’ll get you there in a jiffy. Are you from
the big house up yonder?” He jerked his thumb in the direction of the
sanitarium.
An involuntary shudder ran through the young man. His eyes dilated. He
shrank away from the motorist.
“My God! Not there! Not there again!” he implored. “Please don’t take me
back to that den! You think that I’m a madman. I can see that you do.
I’m sane—as sane as you. But heavens knows why—after the hell I’ve been
through!”
He turned to the driver and grasped him by the arm.
“Give her the gas!” he exclaimed. “Can’t you see that I’m doomed? But no.
You know nothing of the Bodymaster and the strange hold he has over his
subjects. He is after me—he, the Bodymaster! It is to save others from
the same fate that I must tell what I know!”
With a sudden bound he leaped forward, his eyes wild, his hair in a
tousled mass, his hands stretched out, the fingers clawing wildly, his
whole body quivering. Then he dropped to the floor of the machine as if
hurled by unseen hands.
“He is _here_! _The Bodymaster is here!_” he shrieked. “Drive—for the
love of God, dr——”
The words ended in a dull, throaty gurgle as he writhed upon the floor of
the machine at the other’s feet. The driver, bewildered by the strange
scene, threw in the clutch, and the machine dashed madly down the
pavement.
The young man was on his back now, his knees drawn up, his face ghastly
and twisted, his eyes bulging, his fingers clawing as if unseen hands
were gripping at his throat. His mouth was open—gaping as he fought for
breath.
With a wild yell of terror, the driver leaped from the machine. The
automobile swerved, skidded—then hurled its weight against a nearby tree.
Summoning his courage, he rose to his feet from the side of the road,
where his fall had thrown him among the brush and brambles, and
approached the wreck.
In the bottom of the car the stranger lay dead!
_And upon his white throat were the black marks of fingers!_
_CHAPTER II._
John Duncan was arrested, charged with the murder of the unknown young
man.
He had no defense. The evidence was all against him. The body of the
stranger had been found in his damaged car. Death was the result of
strangulation. The marks of fingers were upon the dead man’s throat.
The defendant admitted that the deceased had been alive when he entered
the machine. And the story he told was so strange, so unbelievable, that
even his own attorney scoffed at it. How, then, could a judge believe his
tale?
Doctor Darius Lessman was called upon to testify at the preliminary
hearing. Tall, gaunt, saturnine, his raven hair, slightly tinged with
gray, brushed back from his high forehead, he looked the student, the man
of research, and as such he impressed the jury.
Carefully, painstakingly, he made an examination of the body. To the best
of his knowledge and belief, he testified, he had never seen the man in
life. How he chanced to be wandering about the grounds of the Lessman
sanitarium he did not know. He added to the already favorable opinion
formed of him by the judge and jury by asking that he be allowed to pay
the funeral expenses of the ragged stranger.
One man alone believed the tale told by John Duncan. He was Patrick
Casey, captain in command of the homicide squad of the Metropolitan
Police Department.
The alleged murder had happened outside of Casey’s jurisdiction; but the
captain chanced to be present at the hearing. Immediately afterward he
sought an interview with the defendant.
For a second time he heard the story, questioned Duncan closely and,
at the close of his visit, advised the accused to retain the private
inquiry agency of which I am the head. He even interested himself to the
extent of calling me up, telling me of what he had done and asking that I
take the case as a personal favor to him.
John Duncan, being a wealthy man, accepted the policeman’s advice. And
thus I became a figure in what I am forced to believe was the strangest
series of happenings that ever fell to mortal man.
I admit that I am ashamed of the part fate forced me to play. The reader
will probably term me either a fool or a lunatic. I am certain that I am
not a fool. As for being a lunatic—as I have stated in my foreword, I do
not know. But I digress.
Three days later, armed with letters of introduction from some of the
most celebrated alienists in the city, all vouching for my character and
ability, I applied to Doctor Darius Lessman for a position as attendant.