Chapter 55 - Page 2

but out of their midst an ejaculation sometimes escaped which made me shiver
and did me good: one was, 'O God, it is his blood!' I sat on the tool-chest
and humbly and shudderingly admired him; for I judged he was full of crime.
At last he said in a low voice--

'My little friend, can you keep a secret?'

I eagerly said I could.

'A dark and dreadful one?'

I satisfied him on that point.

'Then I will tell you some passages in my history; for oh,
I MUST relieve my burdened soul, or I shall die! '

He cautioned me once more to be 'as silent as the grave;'
then he told me he was a 'red-handed murderer.'
He put down his plane, held his hands out before him,
contemplated them sadly, and said--

'Look--with these hands I have taken the lives of thirty human beings!'

The effect which this had upon me was an inspiration to him,
and he turned himself loose upon his subject with interest and energy.
He left generalizing, and went into details,--began with his first murder;
described it, told what measures he had taken to avert suspicion;
then passed to his second homicide, his third, his fourth, and so on.
He had always done his murders with a bowie-knife, and he made all my
hairs rise by suddenly snatching it out and showing it to me.

At the end of this first seance I went home with six of his
fearful secrets among my freightage, and found them a great
help to my dreams, which had been sluggish for a while back.
I sought him again and again, on my Saturday holidays; in fact I
spent the summer with him--all of it which was valuable to me.
His fascinations never diminished, for he threw something fresh
and stirring, in the way of horror, into each successive murder.
He always gave names, dates, places--everything. This by and by enabled
me to note two things: that he had killed his victims in every
quarter of the globe, and that these victims were always named Lynch.
The destruction of the Lynches went serenely on, Saturday after Saturday,
until the original thirty had multiplied to sixty--and more to be
heard from yet; then my curiosity got the better of my timidity,
and I asked how it happened that these justly punished persons all bore
the same name.

My hero said he had never divulged that dark secret to any
living being; but felt that he could trust me, and therefore
he would lay bare before me the story of his sad and blighted life.
He had loved one 'too fair for earth,' and she had reciprocated
'with all the sweet affection of her pure and noble nature.'
But he had a rival, a 'base hireling' named Archibald Lynch,
who said the girl should be his, or he would 'dye his hands
in her heart's best blood.' The carpenter, 'innocent and
happy in