Page:Weird Tales Volume 4 Number 2 (1924-05-07).djvu/114
To remove the books and typewriter wanted but a moment. Then, seizing the body in his powerful arms, he deposited it in the trunk. The tray would not go in now. He removed the clothing from it and packed it in around the corpse. The tray, he then broke up and threw it in the box from which he had taken the body. Then, grumbling as he did so, he placed the books and typewriter in with the broken tray. "It's heavy enough now," he growled, "but I hate to let that old machine go."
Carefully, so that he would not be heard above the rumble of the train, he nailed up the box that now contained books and typewriter.
Next he removed a worn leather case from his pocket. From it he took a small phial containing a brownish liquid and a hypodermic needle. Wetting a small piece of cotton in this liquid, he applied it gently to the eyes, nostrils, and mouth of the corpse, and injected subcutaneously a small quantity at a half-dozen or more places about the body. Then he closed the lid of the trunk and hastily corded it up. But before proceeding very far with the cording, he carefully unfastened the catch on the door. He need no longer fear interruption, and he breathed a sigh of relief that no one had tried the door while it was locked.
The train was already approaching the suburbs of Ironville, Dr. Grant's home city, when he had finished his work in the baggage car. He hastened back to the smoker to get his hand luggage ready before they should reach his destination. And, a few minutes later, he was standing on the platform watching the porters as they removed his trunk from the baggage car, making facetious remarks about its weight as they did so.
Had it not been for the contents of the trunk the physician would have taken a taxi to his home, leaving the trunk to follow. But he dreaded the possible delay in that ease. If his experiment was to be a success there was no time to be lost. Consequently he found an expressman, and, riding on the seat with the driver, kept the trunk in sight all the way home.
To awake along somewhere in the late thirties or early forties to the fact that one is a failure in life, is by no means an unusual experience. What is unusual is found in the way the individual reacts to that awakening. Most men simply accept the bitter fact and plod along in their accustomed rats, hopeless; although not usually without casting occasional envious glances in the direction of their contemporaries who have already achieved success, or those who are well on the road to its achievement. Some men there are whom this revelation merely causes to redouble their energies in the pursuit of their chosen professions, resolved that, however belated, their success shall be none the less brilliant. Then there are those—often unwise—souls who east themselves adrift from their old moorings resolving to begin life anew, who seek entirely different surroundings, a different line of work, and a new set of friends. Of this type are many of the men who, on the threshold of middle age, with their families grown, or growing up, suddenly disappear from their homes and friends, in many cases never to be seen or heard of again; or, in a few rare instances, to appear again after an absence of ten, fifteen, or twenty years to lay a fortune at the feet of their loved ones.
Of the latter type was John Ransome, although his method was not typical of his class. John Ransome did not run quite true to form.
When he realized that in reaching his maximum of usefulness to the New York firm with which he held an upper clerkship he had also reached the maximum of his earning power in that capacity his first conscious impulse that followed a number of dark days and sleepless nights was to disappear quietly and completely. But somewhere in John Ransome's makeup there was a streak of caution, he was not the man to plunge headlong into anything new. First, he resolved, he must carefully study over the situation, then plan each consecutive move. Through a friend he learned the name of an employment agent in Cleveland. He wrote this agent and, after much correspondence, at last succeeded in landing a position there.
"New York doesn't seem to agree with me any more," John Ransome said to his wife the evening after receiving the promise of the Cleveland job. "I don't feel myself at all—haven't for months. Fellow I met down town told me he believed I needed the Middle Western climate. So I sat down and wrote an employment agency in Cleveland." He showed her the letter offering him a position.
Although because of the possible unfavorable psychological effect she had refrained from mentioning it Mrs. Ransome had for some time observed her husband's failing health; consequently she was not sorry to learn of this new resolution, even though it would entail the breaking up of many long standing friendships, to say nothing of more ephemeral social connections.
A week later John Ransome left New York City with the understanding that as soon as he was settled in his new position he would find a suitable home, then send for his wife and children. When he arrived in Cleveland he registered at a good medium priced hotel. Several days were spent in looking over the city; it was his first trip west of the Hudson, and there were many things to see. On the evening of his arrival there he wrote his wife. It was his first letter since leaving New York—as well as his last. The letter teemed with expressions of affection for herself and the children, and the wish that he might see them, again. All absolutely genuine and true; so much so that throughout his stay in Cleveland Ransome was continually fighting with an almost overwhelming impulse to abandon his project and either go back home or go to work and send for his family.
Finally there came a morning when John Ransome was missing from his room at the hotel. His suitcases were still there, and they, together with the hotel dresser, contained all the possessions, clothing and personal belongings, that Ransome had taken with him with the exception of an old, well-worn blue serge suit, a pair of canvas shoes, and a gray tweed cap. Mrs. Ransome later identified the suit cases and their contents, and made note of the missing articles, upon which descriptions of the missing man were broadcast over the country.
When the Eastbound freight drove its way through the middle of the string of empties at Blair's Crossing the first report that went out to the world was that there had been no casualties. True, no member of either train crew was killed, or even seriously injured, but when an hour or so later the wrecking crew reached the scene, the first thing they did was to uncover the bodies of four men under a heap of wreckage. The car in which these men had been riding was evidently directly in the locomotive's path, the horrible mangling of three of them told as much, but the fourth was almost uninjured. It seemed that he had been rendered unconscious by a blow above the car, then smothered by the bodies of the other three, which were heaped about his head.
"Hoboes," was the infallible inference.
"What shall we do with them?—nobody ever wants hoboes," demanded one of the crew.
"Couldn't possibly identify these fellows, anyway," said the foreman, indi-