The Black Mask — page 48: what you’re looking at

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

waking moments. It all seemed ordi- nary and commonplace. Blaisdell quietly mounted the stairs _ until he reached the second floor and there he paused before a closed door, overcome by a suffocating sense of fear and repugnance. He half turned away and then retraced his steps as if fasci- nated. Something seemed to warn him away from that ominous door, behind which lay a mystery that the everyday Blaisdell, millionaire and bon vivant, did not care to penetrate, but which this nocturnal, prowling Blaisdell seemed to insist upon, Then, without any con- scious volition on his part, Blaisdell placed his hand on the knob and the door opened noiselessly. He found himself in a large, square living-room, tastefully furnished and lined with built-in bookcases full of handsomely bound volumes. Every- where he looked, he saw _ bizarre weapons of defense and men in Chinese and Japanese armor looked threaten- » ingly at him from dim corners of the room. It was either the apartment of an art connoisseur or a globe-trotter with a propensity for the unusual. From this room he stepped into a bedchamber and then started back with a little gasp. It was a luxuriously fur- nished room that appeared to have been transplanted by Aladdin’s wonderful lamp straight from the perfume-scented Orient. Blaisdell advanced further into the room and his feet sank into a won- derful, moss-like carpet.- To one side of the room was an old-fashioned four- poster bed, topped by a crimson canopy. In the exact centre of this bed lay a man asleep, with his mouth open. There was something strangely fa- miliar about the sleeper, and Blaisdell drew closer and gazed at him steadily. He was an oldish man with a sallow complexion and a wisp of a beard that was slightly tinged with grey. The ghost of a smile lingered upon his lips The Face that Stared Back at Blaisdell —a cruel smile that sleep could not make gentle nor mirthful, - And as he gazed upon the sleeper, tage grew in Blaisdell’s heart, a rage so furious that it almost suffocated him. Without a moment’s hesitation he seized the sleeper by the throat and began throttling him.. The man _ struggled furiously, His eyes popped open and gazed up into Blaisdell’s with a look of freezing despair. A slight froth gath- ered upon his purpling lips and he squirmed and writhed like a snake in Blaisdell’s unrelenting grasp. God how he struggled! Blaisdell’s fingers sank into the throat as if it were satin, and then, suddenly, there were no more struggles. The body fell back inertly as the steel-like fingers relaxed. Blaisdell pulled the bedclothes over the mask of horror and stole quietly from the room. He felt that his errand had been accomplished. _ As he went back over the route that he had just pursued, he felt again that weird sense of unfamiliarity that had at first possessed him, and this feeling of strangeness increased as he neared his own apartment house. He walked in and hurried past the sleeping hall-boy without waking him. Once inside his apartment, he rushed into the bedroom, but his counterpart was gone. Blaisdell undressed with trembling fingers, but his head had _ scarcely touched the pillow before he was sound asleep. II A sHart of sunlight fell across Blais- dell’s face‘and he awoke with a shudder. “Ugh! What a horrible nightmare!’ he said aloud. “I feel as if I actually did kill that man!” : Then he yawned and rang for his valet. After a casual breakfast he was glancing through the newspaper when he received the shock that changed him “ e on ing gee | hy (0) oks’ com . | |