The Black Mask — page 97: what you’re looking at

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

" i 4 j Where the Span Splits By Sam Heilman I OMORROW at 7:32 a. m. I shall have reached the end | of my thirty-fifth year. I have prepared a program for the morning that I have well- considered for fifteen years. At 6:30 I shall arise and breakfast with good appetite. From 7 to 7:25 I shall occupy myself in filling the bath-tub and regulating the temperature of the water. It will take at least fourteen minutes to get the exact warmth desired, something between 98 and 99 degrees, Fahrenheit, Haviag completed this task to my satisfaction I shall go into the liv- ing room, place a record of Mas- senet’s “Elegy” on the music ma- chine and start it off, softly and slowly. I shall then return to the bathroom. Again testing the water and regulating the flow of hot and cold to maintain the required tem- perature I shall climb into the tub. With a razor I shall cut the arteries in both wrists. This will be done at 7:32 exactly —the hour of my birth and the end of my thirty-fifth year. I shall lie back contentedly and laugh. My body and the water, be- ing in caloric harmony, there will be no pain. This I have learned of the Romans, Pi men, know best how to live splendidly and die luxuriously. To the compassionate music of the “Elegy” I shall glide and melt into the Infinite with the quiet smile of a victor. For I shall have defeated the Law of Compensation, beaten it as it never has been beaten before. Iam not insane. A _ cringing, spiritless, whining world will doubt- less call my act one of. an uf balanced mentality but what care I? I have no reason that society would accept for this deed of self-elimina- tion. I have no financial difficul- ties, nO worries prey on me, my health is perfect, I have not been un- successful in love—in fact, as I write this tonight, I am exuberantly and exultingky happy and care-free. When the cat pounces the rat will not be there. I can picture his look of chagrin. ° I am putting this on paper, not that others may profit by my ex- ample, for I know they will not. Frankly, I am doing it in a spirit of braggadocio. I want a world of rats to know that one rat has es- caped the claws of the inevitable. I want it known that the years that are mine I have taken and used to the utmost. The years that Com- pensation takes unto itself I shall not intrude upon. We are quits. . We are breaking even and to breal even with it is victory for me— complete, smashing, thorough and absolute. Even at the risk of being tedious I shall go into some details for it is only in this way that the full ex- tent of my triumph can be made plain to a race of futile, unthinking, servile pawns. When I was twelve years old my 95