* * * * *
An uncanny, eerie, ghost-like place, this sanitarium of Doctor Lessman’s.
My first glimpse of it recalled to mind a description I had read
somewhere of a ruined castle “from whose tall black windows came no ray
of light and whose broken battlements showed a jagged line against the
moonlit sky.” It had been built—some half century before—for a mad-house.
Its owner, a better physician than a business man, had lost his all
before its completion, and it had fallen badly into decay when Lessman
purchased it.
It stood in the midst of an arid thicket of oaks, cedars and stunted
pines. Lessman, evidently, had done little to improve the place or its
surroundings save to finish that part that had been left uncompleted by
the former owner, and year after year it had grown more gloomy and less
habitable. The state highway ran a scant half mile away, crowded on both
sides by the stunted forest, a macadamized driveway which wound about
through the trees, leading to the house. The nearest habitation was
several miles away.
How such a place could be approved by the state as a hospital for
the cure of nervous disorders has always been a question to me. Yet
investigation proved that Lessman had a state license, although to the
best of my knowledge his institution had no patients, nor did it seek
them. It was a sanitarium in name only.
In my character of a man seeking employment, I thought it best to walk
the last lap of the journey. Dismissing my chauffeur at the edge of the
forest, lest some one from the house discover my means of transportation,
I sent him home and trudged down the pathway toward the ancient pile.
_I must digress long enough to state that this was the last time I was
seen until I made my reappearance months afterward, to all appearances a
raving maniac. Naturally, after several weeks had passed and nothing was
heard from me, my family and friends commenced an investigation. Doctor
Lessman was able to prove to them that I had never reached his place, in
spite of the statement made by Hopkins, the chauffeur. The latter was
arrested and would probably have been held for my murder had it not been
for my timely reappearance. But more of this later._
I approached the great door, studded with iron nails and set in a
doorway of massive brick and stone. There was no sign of a bell, and I
was finally forced to resort to my knuckles to hammer a tattoo on the
weather-beaten panel.
I had almost decided to try the door in the rear, when I heard the
approach of a heavy step. There came a sound of rattling chains and the
clanking of massive bolts. Then a key was turned with a grating noise,
and the big door swung back.
Something told me to flee; but I shook off the feeling as unworthy a man
of my profession and stood my ground. Had I but obeyed that impulse Had I
but obeyed that impulse I would have been a happier man today!
Doctor Lessman, clad in a faded bathrobe, his forefinger between the
pages of the volume he had been reading, greeted me. For an instant his
gaze traveled over me from head to foot, then went past me as if seeking
my means of approach. Apparently satisfied with his inspection, he took
my letters of introduction and read them carefully, questioning me on
several points.
With a gesture of his slender hand he invited me to enter—_the lair of
the Bodymaster_!
_CHAPTER III._
What better proof that I was not insane during those horrible months
than that during my rational periods I kept a diary? Fragmentary though
it is, showing as it does the awful strain under which I was placed, the
detective instinct must have been uppermost at all times.
I remember nothing of writing it. Yet here it is in my own handwriting.
Evidently so deeply impressed upon my subconscious mind must have been
my mission—the fact that I was there to save an innocent man from the
gallows—that, like a man in his sleep, I wrote, not knowing that I
did, obsessed with the one idea—to preserve the evidence which I was
accumulating against Darius Lessman. Why he did not destroy the diary
I do not know. Possibly I had it too well hidden. Or he may not have
thought it worth while, believing that I would never escape.