“Last night I killed a man. Of this I am almost certain. I, a man sworn
to avenge crime and to track down criminals, have the brand of Cain
upon my brow. My hands are dripping with blood. I should be in a cell
in murderers’ row, waiting for an avenging law to hang me, instead of
breathing the air of freedom. But am I free? No! A thousand times no! I
am as much a prisoner as I would be behind the bars of a felon’s cage.
“As one watches a motion picture thrown upon the silver screen, I see
myself with Meta by my side.... We cross a darkened thoroughfare....
The details are fragmentary—occasional. I know that we are near a
house. A window is open. We enter. At her command, I approach the safe
placed in the wall. It seems to open to my touch.... Meta is holding a
flashlight—And yet it is not Meta! It is another—a girl, fair-haired,
sweet of face—yet her will is the will of Meta. Meta’s is the driving
force behind her actions, just as my body is driven onward by the iron
will of the Bodymaster....
“Some one is approaching. We step behind the curtain. He enters and snaps
on the light. At sight of the open safe, he turns. He is about to give
the alarm.... There is a knife in my hand.... I strike! God in Heaven! _I
have killed him!_... We seize the jewels from the safe and escape....”
“There was the stain of blood on my hand when I awoke this morning. I
am a murderer! Oh God! I pray that it was all a dream. Yet it was so
realistic that I am forced to believe that it is true.
“I have discovered the evidence which I set out to find. But what a
terrific price I have paid for what I have learned. Under his will, my
brain is a vacuum, rattling around within its pan like a pebble in a tin
bucket, functioning only when he so commands. But wait! This can not be
entirely so. I must still have some reasoning power left, else I would
not be writing these lines. Thank God for that!
“Yet even as I write I know that The Bodymaster is planning my death.
He has it within his power to drive my soul from out my body—to usurp
this tenement of clay with his own polluted brain. How he works his
wonders I will describe later if I am able. It is hard for me to think
consecutively.
“Lessman’s is the greatest brain, his the most wonderful intellect,
the world has ever known. His is the accumulated wisdom of the
centuries—since Jesus of Nazareth trod this earth there has been none who
could accomplish the wonders he has performed. Think what a power for
good he might have been!
“I must publish his devilishness to the world. John Duncan lies festering
in a felon’s cell, perhaps to stretch a hempen rope for a crime that
Lessman committed. I must save him if I can. Yet who will believe me?
Wise judges and learned counsel scoffed and jeered at what Duncan had to
tell. What, then, will they say when they read these lines? I see them
smile derisively and tap their bulging brows in token of my madness.
“Meta is the lure he used to hold me in his power. My instinct told me to
flee the minute I crossed the threshold. Would to heaven I had! Lessman
must have read my thoughts, for he pressed the bell which summoned her to
his side.
“One glimpse of Meta Vinetta and I was lost.
“Lessman introduced me to her as his sister. I know now that she is more
to him than that—that she is his soul mate, his affinity. She is his
accomplice in all the devilish schemes which incubate within his wondrous
brain.
“Together they can rule the world. Lessman holds that the body is a
shell, a house built only to hold the soul, deriving its power from the
spirit, the will. To him there is no crime in murder, for his theology
holds that the snapping of the thread of life is merely the release of
the soul which soars away to realms on high. His is the belief that
might is right. He needs the bodies of his victims in order to practice
his devilish arts. He has the power to take them, and he uses it to
the utmost. He holds that the body is not a prison house, but a slave
to will. In his philosophy, it is simply a useful tool over which the
spirit possesses absolute control. He is neither a spiritualist nor a
theosophist. His is a theory all by itself and of itself.
“_Lessman has elected to live forever!_ Of that I am certain. He and
Meta—the woman he loves.”