Butler High School - Magnet Yearbook (Butler, PA)

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THE M A G N E T SUSPENSE. (By Lcyland C. Stauffer.) ON E dark and dreary evening I walked the streets in despair. My wife was dying, and God knows what agonies I suffered. My very soul seemed to cry out in its bitterness against the irony of fate. I shunned the more densly populated streets, and sought the open and untrafficked ways. Above the cruel insistence, the maddening repetition of the counts I held against the cruel world, as in a second nature, t felt that I was being—. Oh, no, it could not be! It was only a trick of my grief crazed mind. As I turned up a dark, narrow and unfrequented street, a sharp and penetrating wind whistled down the avenue, buffeted from house to house ’till it met me, wreaking its vengeance ten-fold. Hatless and insufficiently clad, I was completely at the mercy of the whirling, shrieking gusts which beat and surged across my unprotected chest and my still more defenseless face, with a passionate and unrelenting fury of temper. Yet what was that foul clamor which was borne along by this gale? There suddenly seemed to be a dozen ringing, gutteral and screeching voices, each trying to reach my ears. Obstipui; stetemnt que comae; vox fancibus haesit! This demonstration of unearthly powers was exceedingly weird. The very tones of the voices were now enough to drive a music-loving soul crazy with despair of ever reaching the acme of their loveliness one moment—yet the next, and dulcet tones had changed to gruff, compelling accents, driving voices, or to murderous, commanding notes. The singular point of this medley, so supernaturally heard, was that though the voices changed, the words remained the same : “You are followed by him who would kill you! Escape while you may!” “Was this fancy?” I asked myself. Did I really hear the voices ringing in my ears, or was I becoming insane in my grief? I stopped to reason. If I were mad from grief, why did my brain manifest a mania so different from the cause of my derangement? The very fact that 1 was able to reason, to argue, pointed favorably to my sanity. Yet why was I plagued in this manner, when I could already scarcely bear the burden with which life’s chances had loaded my heart, my brain? Great was my relief when I came to a cross street, down which the horrible blast blew not. Hard! What was that! A heavy, padded sound, as of footsteps, manifested itself, coming up the street which I had just abandoned. It was true! I was followed! I fled, yet I stopped and re-assured myself. This was no portion of town for a murder; the man was following me to a more suitable spot for his deed. Were I to run it would only hasten my death, for I must again pass through the slums on my way to my home, in the better end of town. So I set out at a quiet, sedate pace, as befits a man in his later years. Still that ominous pat, pat, pat. pat of my pursuer’s feet followed. By this time my grief for my dying wife was forgotten—a sign of my cowardice. Suddenly, a thought flashed across my mind. I had over twenty thousand dollars in my wallet. For the money I cared nothing; I was rich. For my life, everything. Drawing out my wallet, I took a bill and, with a shaking hand and a fountain pen, wrote: “To him who haunts me: Take this money and go thy way. Harm me not.

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2 THE MAGNET above her head it towered. The ugly huge mouth grinned. “Sick ’m, Nero; chase him out of the house!” exclaimed Devona. The monster’s hideous grin broadened as he said: “I will fix your dog!” Standing on one leg, the thing waved the other foot over Nero’s head and pronounced some words that sounded like: “Pobo Sodo Babarich Kivitch, Gawba Hawba, Wawba,” and Nero immediately diminished in size and became a cloth and saw-dust image. “You mean thing!” exclaimed Devona. “You have turned my pet dog into a plaything!” Two big tears rolled down the face of the inanimate thing that had once been Nero. The monster then seized Devona by the arm and said: “Come with me, little girl !” She felt herself going down through the floor. Just how she and the monster could go through the floor without breaking something, Devona herself could not understand. “The triumph of mind over matter,” explained the monster. Down, down, down they went; down a great hole in the earth. “Where are we going?” timidly asked Devona. “To the land of ghosts,” answered her captor. Finally they landed on a grassy plain. A sheeted ghost appeared. “Now, don’t scream!” cautioned the ghost. But Devona did scream, and lustily, too. “Oh, you heartless creature!” groaned the ghost. “Look at what you’ve done!” Commencing at the ground, the substance of which the ghost was composed very slowly disappeared until there was nothing visible but the head. “How cruel of you!” continued the ghost. “Now all the other ghosts will laugh at me for not having a body.” A noise behind her caused her to turn around. An upright, grinning skeleton was facing her. Again Devona screamed. The skeleton’s lower jaw worked convulsively. “You wicked girl,” groaned the skeleton, “now I will have stomach trouble for the next seven years. Didn’t you know that screaming would interfere with my digestive apparatus?” The idea that a skeleton, which by the very nature of things, couldn’t have a stomach, being bothered with indigestion, struck Devona as being very funny, and she burst forth into a hearty laugh. The skeleton groaned heavily. “Now you’ve fixed me about right. Have you no regard for others’ feelings?” As the skeleton uttered these words it collapsed into a shapeless pile of bones at Devona’s feet. In the distance a tiger was approach-ing. “Great Scott! exclaimed the monster, “somebody has let the tiger out ! He won’t hurt spirits, but how he will enjoy making a meal of a school girl with pink-cheeks !” As the tiger drew near, Devona was startled by a noise that sounded like Nero’s whine. Opening her eyes, she beheld Nero, with his front paws on the center table and his nose pointing toward her candy. “Yes, Nero, I will give you another bon-bon for waking me from that horrible dream.” And Nero’s tail wagged violently as he consumed the dainty bit of sweet.

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4 THE MAGNET and I shall be ever thankful. As a signal that you will comply with this request, turn down this cross-street.’ I dropped the wallet where he could not help seeing it, and sped up the street into the darkness. 1 turned and watched the man. When he came into the light of the street lamp, by whose help I had indited the epistle, he immediately discovered the wallet. He was a burly, villainous-looking man, with a scar extending an indeterminate distance across his left cheek. He looked at the money in the wallet, pulled out one of the bills, and read my note. He flashed an ugly, knowing glance my way, and passed down the side street as directed. Infinitely relieved, I walked more briskly up the avenue, again meditating the subjects of death and immortality of the soul. To my surprise, when I had come to the corner, I had no choice but to turn downwards. The avenue I was on extended no further. It was a “blind alley.” I could not turn up because of the paving and cementing work going on in the cross street. So down I turned. I was lost in my philosophizing, or I would have remembered that my villain had gone that way. As I passed the first alley, out stepped the man! With a wild cry, I dashed to the other side of the street and ran at full speed down the pavement. He followed at a killing pace. I quickened my speed from sheer fright, and was pleased to note that the man soon dropped back and finally stopped. Soon home, I learned that the critical point was passed, and my wife was on the road to recovery. Giving praise to our Saviour, I descended to my study because I was uncermoniously ejected from the sick-room. As I entered my study, a maid brought me my wallet and a note. Surprised beyond all measure, I quickly scanned the note and broke out in hearty laughter at the contents: “Mr. L. C. S. I found your wallet tonight on my beat. I followed you and seemed to have scared you by my sudden appearance at the alley. The money is intact, as I found it. Signed, John T. I'itzguard, Plainclothes Police.” Relieved, I wrote him a cordial letter, enclosing one of the thousand-dollar notes, and requested him to come and see me. His story as he told it to me later in a persona] visit, does much to clear matters up. The path I had chosen happened to be his beat, and he also imagined the wind to be a carrier of voices that night. It was merely a case of auto-suggestion. The bill he looked at was one of the thousand kind, he never having seen one before. Also, he had turned down the side street and over to the next avenue because he knew I must go the way I did. He was not quite as villainous as he looked—just a pugnacious Trish plainclothes “bull.” For the last six months I have been taking nerve cures.