Page:Weird Tales Volume 6 Number 4 (1925-10).djvu/77

ghosts have the wounds of the original body. I'll confess I'm confused. I've just realized something that completely upsets my theory."

He had been about to remove his coat, but he stopped. "What is that, doctor?" he asked.

"The fact that, although you are wearing a red necktie, your earthly body, exactly like you in every other respect, wears a modest black one."

He gave a shriek of agony, and jumped up, horror depicted on his countenance.

"No, doctor, don't tell me that the body was wearing black!"

"Yes, indeed. Same color gray suit, and shirt, but a black necktie."

He sank his face in his hands and I heard a heartbroken moan. "Oh, I see it all. What a villain I am! It's all the fault of this nervous trouble I've been having. I'm not a suicide, then; I'm a fratricide. I lived with my twin brother, and we dressed exactly alike except that he did not share my love for pretty ties. I've shot my brother instead of myself!"

It Was a Subtle Crime That Crawley Planned,
But Unexpected Was Its Result

Crawley knelt on the floor of his bathroom, in each hand a wire leading from the electric light socket over his head. He had spent a long time preparing for this moment, and there must be no slip now.

Tall, slim and dark, with a face like a saint's, which only his flaming eyes betrayed in the dull haze of the February dawn, he waited until the cascading shower in the room below should tell him that his victim, the man he hated as much as he loved that man's wife, should be in his control.

His ear pressed to the pipe, he heard the water splashing. The gay whistle that usually accompanied the running stream was absent, and for a moment Crawley wondered. Then he roused himself. He must act quickly. He could hear the man below moving about under the shower.

Removing his head from danger, Crawley firmly wrapped the naked wires around the pipe. Quickly he pressed his ear to the floor. He heard a moan, followed by a duller noise, as if the bather, slipping on a cake of soap, had fallen into the tub. Then silence, except for the sound of steadily flowing water.

Crawley jerked the wire from the pipe and replaced the light bulb in its socket. Taking the cord into his living room, he restored it to the electric floor lamp from which he had removed it, and placidly sat down to wait.

It would not be long until Margaret Brinslow would note the tardiness of her husband and would go to call him. She would find the door locked, would