Argosy, Vol. 120, No. 1 — page 87: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

ROPE’S LENGTH. found him in the questionable east end of Carisford, sparsely settled by negroes. Four blocks to the north lay the river. He turned as if to return home, but walked down a steep declivity to the river bank. There in the semi-darkness he reversed his coat, crumpled his hat and, with a few deft touches known only to an artist in make-up, affected'a transformation in his appearance. A little more than a mile down the river was the houseboat. All the way it was dark and he ran little danger of being de- tected. This was perhaps the least fre- quented of any of the eight or ten ways which he used in going to and from his ‘retreat. Twenty minutes later he let himself into the houseboat, where he lighted a candle and started_a fire in the cookstove. The house was scantily furnished with a ‘bed, a dresser with a broken mirror, a table, writing paper, and a great number of books. He was careful to see that the house was comfortably if not elegantly furnished and that it was plentifully stocked with read- ing matter, for he expected some day to make it his permanent home, at least for several months. While the stove heated he changed clothes and added the finishing touches to his toilet. suming a character other than his own, which he did with such intensity that he almost forgot his own identity and lived in the life of the character he was trying to portray. But next to that was his genius for make-up. What preparation he used is not known, but his complexion assumed a pale, sickly cast, and his eyes became sunken and animated like a madman’s. Herman Carlstach, banker, emerged into John Sibert, studeht of crime. After a repast of bacon, eggs and black coffee (the larder was well filled) he drew out his manuscript on ‘“ The Psychology of Crime.” He was really interested in writing, and had actually written six chap- ters. But to-night he wrote nothing. A great plan was moving, half formed, in his inner consciousness. He did not immediately set himself to working it out. Great inspirations are not His greatest strength was in as-- forced, but are born full grown in a happy mind—the day dreams of genius. Accord- ingly he let himself revel in the joys of a creator. For he was a creator—not a creator of characters in fiction or drama, but a crea- tor, like God, of a living man, whom people heard and saw and felt with their corporeal senses. He had created John Sibert exactly as he would kill Herman Carlstach. But others would never know that the soul of Carlstach still lived in the body of Sibert. And he had made Sibert real; he had per- sonality, tastes, habits of his own. Except . for a superficial physical resemblance, he was as widely separated from Carlstach as one man could be from another. Carls- tach had seen to that. Carlstach—when he went to church—attended the First Con- gregational; Sibert went every other Sun-. day to the All-Souls’ Mission. He had actually made Sibert appear at the bank while he was absent from the city with an alibi as good as the telegraph com- pany can produce. That was a happy thought. He really went to a distant part of the State to the bedside of a fictitious aunt and wired the president of her death. Then he boarded a fast train for home and four hours later was walking the streets of Carisford as John Sibert. The next morning he called on the president. Out of this incident in the joint life of Carlstach and Sibert grew Carlstach’s next move. He would introduce Sibert to the police and thus further establish him as a separate identity. The following week he would take his annual vacation, and with his knowledge of the police courts, it would not be difficult to put the thing across. After a few minutes of perfecting his plans, John Sibert, stooped, sallow, and with sunken eyes burning with the fires of fanaticism, ambled off to the city to wheeze into unwilling ears his theories on crime. Carfstach was to begin his vacation Mon- day morning at Mountainboro, forty-five miles north of Carisford. If the fishing was good, the cashier promised to join him early in the week. : Early Monday morning Carlstach left in his roadster, and before noon registered at the Mountainboro Inn. It was early in the V7 GOMIIG OOO S CO@