The Black Mask — page 45: what you’re looking at

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

. _ The Abandoned House handiwork. I almost became happy in -contemplation of what I would do.” What did it matter to me that to accom- plish his destruction I must accomplish my own! The thing he had branded me, I became in reality. I was beauti- ful; soon I learned I was desirable, and I could be fascinating. “I studied all the arts and wiles of the oldest profession in the world, and determined to sell myself to the highest bidder. My education, my knowledge of society, my culture all stood me in good stead. Understand, I always stayed within the law, I was never crude. I took no chances of another arrest. My new name, the one I adopt- _ ed when I became of the demi-monde, I kept unsmirched, if you could call it _ that. I became a leader in the set where mistresses laughed at wives and where lovers were more popular than hus- bands. “J discovered, to my intense delight, that although austere, and- apparently religious, Judge MacPherson’s besetting sin was women, that he used the time- worn excuse of an invalid wife to cover his indiscretions. You don’t know it, of course, as he kept the scandal quiet, but it was I who brought about his divorce. “It took me three years to secure an introduction to him, but it took less than three hours to “hopelessly ensnare him. It was not strange that in the smiling, elegantly blasé woman of the world he did not recognize the half-crazed, be- draggled woman of the police courts. “He was just at that most susceptible age when he felt that youth was slip- ping from him, and old age waiting to claim him had put a taboo on affairs of the heart. With a desperate desire to remain young he flung himself headlong ‘into my hands, never doubting that I was what I appeared—a divorcée whose misplaced affections had made her a trifle bitter toward men, yet who was 43 longing and looking for a loving pro- tector. “T played my cards well. I used all the coyness of the ingénue with the blandishments of the courtesan to keep him on tenter-hooks beforé he became that protector. After that, it was easier. “He did not realize why I suggested week-end parties, gradually making this house their setting, I had, from the first, determined that as this was the home he had destroyed, so here he should be destroyed. “Tt was his money which furnished those rooms upstairs. Rather grim humor, isn’t it? “Can you conceive of the loathing I felt at that man’s touch, how I cringed as he embraced-me? How I laughed and anticipated the climax of it all? He called me a charming child with quaint ideas when he first saw this place, abandoned and decayed. The unusual- ness of our rendezvous appealed to him as unique. Early I learned unwhole- some things intrigued him. “Tonight was our third visit. We arrived just before the storm broke. As usual we brought a lunch kit with our dinner in it. That meal was never eaten. I had drugged the wine just enough to befog his brain, and make him tike wax in my hands. Then as he -sat there, stupid, dazed and inert, I told him who I was, and why he was here. “And I laughed! Laughed at him as he had laughed at me when he had me taken away, kicking and screaming, by the police. You would have laughed, too, had you seen his face} “When I showed him the revolver, and told him I was going to kill him, he cringed like a sick animal, whimpering and begging for mercy—the kind of mercy he hadn’t shown me. Still I laughed! He staggered drunkenly to his feet, and came toward me. I don’t think he felt certain that I meant what I said. I whirled on him and backed “ae "comicbooks*c