Page:Weird Tales Volume 5 Number 1 (1925-01).djvu/109

"Well, is he dead?" I inquired of the other pedestrian, as he arose from beside the prostrate body. But he, too, vouchsafed no answer.

I looked at the form on the ground. There was something vaguely familiar about his clothing, and one sprawling hand showed a ring I recalled having seen before. I lifted the kerchief from his face, but the features were too mangled to afford recognition; and the dreadful angle of his head showed that the man's neck was broken.

Then I heard the man with the card-case speaking.

"It's that young fool, Claiborne," he said with an oath; and whether his anger was at his own narrow escape from the speeding car, or at this careless prodigality and waste of youth, I could not tell; but I turned to him impatiently.

"Don't be an ass," I cried. "I am Claiborne. This fellow was chasing me when he was wrecked."

But they didn't seem to hear me, and then the other one spoke.

"Yes, it's, him, all right. It's a wonder he got out of our way at the speed he was traveling. Tearing along like a crazy man on the highway, with his muffler wide open, at a hundred miles an hour! You could understand it if he was racing now, but there wasn't another car in sight. Gee, and he was twenty-one today."

I cried out to them again, but they didn't seem to hear me and turned away. I then perceived another of the cards on the ground and picked it up. It was my card.

And then I cried out in fright, for now I knew why the dead man's clothing and the dead man's ring seemed so familiar.

They were mine!

Then it was true. There had been no other car. I had accidentally opened the muffler of my own car when shifting my seat, and I had been racing against myself!

This day I had reached my majority.

On this date I had become the absolute master of six millions of money.

Yet this was death.

I was the dead man.

Oh, my God, I am the dead man!