Page:Weird Tales Volume 6 Number 1 (1925-07).djvu/76

either a railroad official or held a special permit from the authorities.

Birndale did not realize that this through express had been ordered to stop at its station for just one reason: to allow old Jim Creighton to get on board.

As he was not seen buying a ticket, no one knew his destination. It was only known that he did not return that day, nor the next, nor even the next. He was gone from Birndale for about a week. When he returned, he carried two large boxes—bulbs they were; the tufts of green stem, already sprouted, were protruding from one of the comers.

These trips by Creighton gradually increased in number, coming at long and irregular intervals. That year, in fact, he was away from Birndale four times, his absence at each period lasting about a week, his leaving always by boarding the through express, and his returning from each trip with a quantity of bulbs and other paraphernalia for his greenhouse. Once he returned wearing a new suit, an ill-fitting garment which augmented even more his stooped figure. Birndale saw but one solution for the mysterious journeys: they embodied a source of income for old Creighton. But how?

If they had taken the trouble of following him on one of these trips, they would have learned how. It would have been a shock to them, a revolting shock.

The train bore Creighton southward, along the banks of the long, broad river, rushing him toward the metropolis at its month. But the metropolis was not his destination, not before other things had been done. When about an hour's run from the great city, the train came to a panting atop with a grinding of brakes, only long enough to allow a single passenger to get oft. That passenger was always Creighton, and his leaving the train always occurred in the darkness of the early morning, but an hour or so before dawn. There followed an automobile ride through silent streets, with no word spoken between the driver and the other occupant. The car finally passed through a heavily barred gate, which swung slowly open at its approach, and came to a standstill within high surrounding granite walls; a muffled word or two with uniformed men, the jangling of keys and the opening of more iron gates until a small room was reached—and then Creighton started to work. . . . .

Creighton's work on these occasions never took up a great deal of time; in fact, it was only a matter of a few seconds. It merely consisted in his closing an electric circuit by pushing down the black handle of a copper switch which was on the wall of the small room. And just as Creighton pushed down that switch, dawn broke outside, dispelling the darkness of the night.

And the instant that Creighton's hand pressed the two copper bars to their resting place, a man died in an adjoining room—a human soul left its mortal body, sent on its unknown flight by the force of many thousands of volts. . . . .

That was how old Jim Creighton earned money to buy his lily bulbs, to supply his greenhouse, and to sustain his weazened body. It is rather difficult to believe that he killed men to live, that the beautiful, white blossoms were reared and nourished because the hearts of sweating men ceased beating; but it was true. Through several centuries, the sharp ax wielded over the head on the block had evolved into the closing of a small electric switch by the hand of a stoop-shouldered old man with demon countenance. Well, somebody had to do it. Why not Creighton? Besides, he was paid for it, paid handsomely. A person ought to be paid well for taking another person's life, shouldn't he?