Page:Weird Tales Volume 6 Number 4 (1925-10).djvu/78

become alarmed at the water seeping under the door, and would call neighbors, who would break down the door.

Then Margaret would find the body; would grieve appropriately; and in due time she and Crawley would wed. It was a pleasant outlook, and Crawley smiled as he settled himself more comfortably.

Crawley did not regard Brinslow's death as a crime. From childhood his only definition of crime had been "blunder", and he viewed as criminals only those who got caught.

He had fallen in love with Margaret Brinslow fourteen months before. Never had woman appealed to him as did she, and for the strangest reason in the world. She was a Puritan, from the sole of her highly arched foot to the top of her pretty little head.

She loved him—she had admitted as much at a moment of tense importuning; but she would not bend herself to his moral code. She refused to run away with him, although confessing that she did not love her husband. She asserted that it was her duty to stick by the man she had married.

She would not think of divorce. Only one thing could so separate them that she would marry Crawley, and that was her husband's death. She had caught the little gleam that flickered in Crawley's eyes at this, although he had long thought himself able to conceal his emotions.

"It would have to be natural death, too," she had added. "If you should kill him, I would hate you forever, and we could never be happy together, either here or hereafter."

Crawley's ideas of the hereafter being highly nebulous, he told himself what he did not tell her, that he must have her as soon as it could be arranged. He must not only outwit the police (dumb-bells in uniform, he characterized them), but he must also outwit Margaret.

He knew Brinslow was in such good physical condition that his death in the natural course of events would be a matter of years, and Crawley was unwilling to wait so long. Besides, in the meantime Margaret would be growing old, and, to his mind, less attractive.

Consequently, much to the neglect of several of the other dubious enterprizes in which he was engaged, Crawley had pondered over a method of slaying Brinslow so none would ever know except himself. With that in view, he had framed his plans, and, unknown to the Brinslows, had rented this apartment above theirs. He had been compelled to wait for several months before the rooms were vacant. He had been afraid to offer to buy out the former tenant's lease, for fear the offer would create curiosity.

If Margaret ever went back on him, he could tell her how her first husband met his death. He grinned as he thought of the shock that would convey to her Puritanical soul. How kind the gods were to men who only dared!

Crawley yielded himself to thoughts of the woman who would soon be his. At last he would be able to comb that tawny cascade of hair with his fingers; he would bruise her lips with his—her lips for which he thirsted greatly. He would be able to hold her close, and none could deny him. And all the time he would be able to smile in the back of his head, over the thing he knew that she would never know—so long as she was good to him.

The coroner would say that Brinslow had died from heart disease. Well, it would be that, except that, the disease had been in Crawley's heart. But soon he hoped to mend it, for Margaret would be his.

He had waited more than a year for this day; it would not be hard to wait