The Homicidal Diary

Even in my own city, three thousand miles from the center of the crimes, there was wild confusion at the announcement of this second spectacular murder. The reader may recall the international effects of the infamous "Ripper" crimes which terrified London a few decades ago and he will understand how rapidly the Head-hunter's fame spread through crime-conscious America. Both murders were made particularly mysterious because of the disappearance of the victims' heads. I knew the damaging influence which these doings would produce upon Carse, for he had always been interested in decapitations, and his thesis at the University of Graz had been based upon the mad career of Emil Drukker, the Head-hunter of Cologne.

I wrote again to Carse and begged him to abandon his studies in these new murders, but, as before, his response was cold and discouraging. There was a wild and almost fanatical tone in his letter which was indicative of his obsessed mind, and an ugly premonition occurred to me that this would be the breaking-point of his career.

The third and fourth murders, so horribly identical with the first two, came about at weekly intervals, and the city was in the grip of strangling terror. There was no rime or reason for the crimes, and yet the diabolical precision of the murderer seemed to indicate he was a madman of uncanny intelligence. In all four cases his victims were vagabonds and people of the lowest order. In none of the murders had the victim been assaulted, but the head had disappeared, seemingly for ever. There was not a shred of evidence pointing to the solution, and, except that the police knew him to be a homicidal maniac, there was not a single person in a city of several millions whom they could call the murderer. Far worse than the four murders committed was the belief that they would continue week after week to an indeterminable conclusion.

I left for the city by plane on the evening of the discovery of the fifth victim, and during the trans-country flight I read Carse's own statement in the Metropolitan Gazette citing the crime as an atavistic expression of animalism. The fact that two of the five victims had been men, according to Carse's theory, belied the popular suspicion that the criminal was a homicidal sadist. Carse expressed the belief that the murderer was in the grip of some inherent savagery, and that the ghastly murders would continue until he wore himself out by the sheer expenditure of energy.

I reached the city shortly after sundown, and at once I felt the awful tension which had settled upon everyone in it. Men and women moved furtively, airport officials and police examined every strange face with cold and scrutinizing suspicion, and even my taxi-driver, a small mousy man, kept his fear-laden dark eyes continually reverting to the mirror as he whirled me through the slight evening traffic. I was surprized, therefore, in view of this mutual distrust, to find that Jason Carse, a veteran criminalist, had discharged all of his servants and was living alone in his grim house behind a barricaded door.

The most unpleasant shock was the unaccountably cold manner in which Carse received my visit, and his positive annoyance that I had forced myself so unexpectedly upon him. He would not explain why he had discharged his servants, nor the secluded life he was now leading, but there was little difficulty in realizing the fatiguing effects which these recent crimes had pronounced upon him. He was virtually a stranger as we met in the hallway and shook hands.

"I wish you'd go to a hotel," he said bluntly. "I don't want anyone here."

But I didn't go to a hotel. I told him flatly that there was no other course open to me but to stay and take care of him; for obviously he wasn't taking care of himself, and his dismissal of the household help had precipitated a needless burden on his already over-laden shoulders. He needed food, for he was thin to emaciation, and I made him dress at once and accompany me to a restaurant where I saw that he ate a decent meal. I then led him to the theater, a particularly lively musical comedy, and kept him in his seat until the curtain had fallen. But my efforts seemed of no avail, as he was continually depressed and absorbed in his own reflections. That night before retiring he came to my room and again asked me to leave.

"It's for your own good," he said with strange harshness. "For God's sake believe what I say!"

For the next several days I watched him sink lower and lower into despondency of so contagious a nature that I felt the insufferable pangs of it myself. He worked late at night on the murder cases, referring constantly to autopsy protocols and police memoranda, and more than once I saw him reading his Bible. On several occasions he visited the county morgue and examined the remains of the Head-hunter's victims, and following each such visit he lapsed into a state of mental and physical agitation that exhausted him within a few hours.

The nights were almost unbearable, and I would lie awake for hours listening to the mumbles and moans which came from his room, oftentimes distinguishing such words as "God forbid it! God forbid it!" and frequently he would scream the word "Head-hunter." There was no doubt that Carse had delved too deeply into this case, and that hour by hour he was descending into the clutch of a dangerous neurosis.

During my stay with him I engaged several servants, but he discharged them, and I was unable to reconcile him to my point of view. His resentment of my visit became more acute as the days passed, and I was beginning to fear that he would forcibly eject me.

It was easy to explain this increased irritability, for I myself, as well as every soul in the city, was nervously awaiting the next prowl of the Head-hunter, and in it I recognized more fuel for the fire that was burning Carse's reason. He was waiting for the fatal Monday night as a man waits for his doom, and each hour found him closer to a mental attack. On Sunday afternoon I discovered him in my room packing my luggage.

"You must go now," he said. "I appreciate your interest in me, but now you must go--you must!"

The tremor of anxiety in his voice nearly convinced me that he was right, but doggedly I clung to my set purpose to save him in spite of himself. I could not leave him alone in face of the developments which would occur sometime between then and Tuesday morning, and I told him so.

"Fool!" he exploded; "I can do nothing with you. Stay if you wish--but it's on your own head!"

The irony of that final statement, whether intentional or not, is something I shall remember to my grave. I don't think that Carse meant it literally--_on my own head_--but I was unable to shake his words out of my ears, and throughout the night and the following day they hung about me like a dirge.