Speaker 1: The face that stared back at Blaisdell by Edward Carty Rannick.
These are the facts in Blaisdell's Queer case, taken from
a communication addressed to his best friend, doctor Maynard Hamilton.
Doctor Hamilton vouchsafes no explanation, nor do I Indeed, there
are phenomenon in this world that cannot be explained. As
Hamlet pointed out to Horatio in the much quoted speech,
the statements given here were contained in a carefully written
paper in Blaisdell's handwriting that was found in Blaisdell's desk
by doctor Hamilton several days after the man's death. From
this paper he has pieced together the extraordinary narrative that
follows one Blaisdell thinks it must have been shortly after
midnight when he fell asleep. Horrible nightmares racked him as
he tossed upon his bed, and one of them was
so frightful that he woke up with a scream, or
thought he did. At any rate, He suddenly found himself
in the center of his bedchamber, dressing with feverish haste.
And here is the queer part of the narrative, for
he affirms that while he was dressing, another man lay
in his bed, an exact counterpart of himself. This other
ego lay quietly asleep, his head on his arm. Blaisdell
studied him carefully and said he felt as a locust
must field when he looks at his outworn shell. All
the time he was dressing, Blaisdell said he seemed to
be impelled to haste by queer promptings that were as
insistent as if some person were at his elbow, saying hurry, hurry.
He finished his dressing in mad excitement, and then hurried
out of the room, casting a backward glance over his
shoulder at his sleeping counterpart. Once outside his apartment house
in Gramercy Park, Blaisdell hurried along his persistent mentor, seeming
to walk at his elbow. A puzzling feature of this
nocturnal prowl was that he felt a sense of familiarity,
a feeling that he was on his way to keep
an appointment that could not be postponed. The streets were
deserted except for an occasional prowler or a patrolman, who
made the night echo with sharp blows from his club
as he struck a metal post, occasionally to remind the
unlawful that the law was abroad. On on hurried Blaisdell.
By this time he had lost all sense of location,
but he was aware that he was in a downtown
section of New York, a section he had never visited
during his waking moments. But although he knew that he
had never been in this neighborhood during his conscious moments,
he felt that he was on familiar territory. Finally, he
paused in front of an old, three story brownstone front
residence in Washington Square, Paused with the air of one
who has reached his destination. He walked up the steps
and let himself into the house with a pass key.
Nor did it seem strange to him that he had
a pass key for a house that he had never
visited during his waking moments. It all seemed ordinary and commonplace.
Blaisdell quietly mounted the stairs until he reached the second floor,
and there he paused before a closed door. Overcome by
a suffocating sense of fear and repugnance, he half turned
away and then retraced his steps, as if fascinated. Something
seemed to warn him away from the ominous door. Behind
which lay a mystery that the everyday Blaisdell, millionaire and bomballant,
did not care to penetrate, but which this nocturnal prowling
Blaisdell seemed to insist upon. Then, without any conscious volition
on his part, Blaisdell placed his hand on the knob,
and the door opened noiselessly. He found himself in a
large square living room, tastefully furnished and lined with built
in bookcases full of handsomely bound volumes. Everywhere he looked
he saw bizarre weapons of defense, and men in Chinese
and Japanese armor looked threateningly at him from dim corners
of the room. It was either the apartment of an
art connoisseur or a globe trotter with a propensity for
the unusual. From this room, he stepped into a bed
chamber and then started back with a little gasp. It
was a luxuriously furnished room that appeared to have been
transplanted by Aladdin's wonderful lamp straight from the perfume scented orient.
Blaisdell advanced further into the room, and his feet sank
into a wonderful mosslike carpet. To one side of the
room was an old fashioned four poster bed topped by
a crimson canopy. In the exact center of this bed
lay a man asleep with his mouth open. There was
something familiar about the sleeper, and Blaisdell drew closer and
gazed at him steadily. He was an Oldish man with
a sallow complexion and a wisp of a beard that
was slightly tinged with gray. The ghost of a smile
lingered upon his lips, a cruel smile that sleep could
not make gentle or mirthful. And as he gazed upon
the stranger, rage grew in Blaisdell's heart, a rage so
furious that it almost suffocated him. Without a moment's hesitation,
he seized the sleeper by the throat and began throttling him.
The man struggled furiously, his eyes popped open, and gazed
up at Blaisdell's with a look of freezing despair. A
slight froth gathered upon his purpled lips, and he squirmed
and writhed like a snake in Blaisdell's unrelenting grasp. God
how he struggled, Blaisdell's fingers sank into the throat as
if it were satin, and then suddenly there were no
more struggles. The body fell back inertly as the steel
like fingers relaxed. Blaisdell pulled the bedclothes over the mask
of horror and stole quietly from the room. He felt
that his errand had been accomplished. As he went back
over the root that he had just pursued, he felt
again that weird sense of unfamiliarity that had at first
possessed him, and this feeling of strangeness increased as he
neared his own apartment house. He walked in and hurried
past the sleeping hallboy without waking him. Once inside his apartment,
he rushed into the bedroom, but his counter was gone.
Blaisdelle undressed with fumbling fingers, but his head had scarcely
touched the pillow before he was sound asleep. Two a
shaft of sunlight fell across Blaisdell's face, and he woke
with a shudder. Ugh, what a horrible nightmare, he said aloud.
I feel as if I actually did kill that man.
Then he gawned and rang for his valet. After a
casual breakfast, he was glancing through the newspaper when he
received the shock that changed him from a careless clubman
to a nervous wreck. Queer murder in Washington Square. That
was the headline he read, and then followed the account
of the crime. A private policeman, while doing his rounds,
had found the front door of an old brownstone residence
open and had investigated. On the second floor. He had
found another door ajar, and going in, had found a
man lying in a queer bed that was overhung by
a red canopy. He was about to steal quietly out
when something in the huddled attitude of the sleeper attracted
his attention, and he then discovered that the man had
been strangled. The marks of fingers were plainly visible upon
his throat. The police investigation had established the fact that
the man's name was Stephen R. Rollins, a famous traveler
and authority on spiritualism. He had lived for years in
the Orient, and a monograph of his on a cult
phenomenon had attracted much attention in scientific circles. My God,
said Blaisdell, as the paper fell from his trembling hands.
My God, did I go to that man's apartment while
I was in the grip of a nightmare and murdered him.
Did I? These questions nearly drove him frantic. What should
he do? What course of action was there for him
to pursue? If he went to the police and told
him that he Herman Blaisdell, descended of a fine old
New York family, had gone forth into the night and
killed a man he had never seen before in his sleep.
What would they think of him? They would probably shrug
their shoulders and advise him to consult an alienist. And
yet this man, this Stephen R. Rollins, was dead, and
his description and that of his apartment coincided in every
detail with the place that Blaisdell had visited in his dream.
But was it a dream? And who was the other
man that lay in his bed? As he went out?
These questions revolved in his mind like a vicious circle,
almost driving him insane. Blaisdell aged after that, he looked
ten years older, and his friend were alarmed about him.
Doctor Hamilton advised a change of environment and rigorous physical exercise,
otherwise he would not be responsible for the consequences. The
man jumped at every sound and had a mortal terror
of the night. He would put off going to bed
until the latest possible moment, and then always slept with
a light in his room. Sometimes his valet would come
quavering to his bedside in the night, frightened out of
his wits by the frightful screams from Blaisdell. I didn't
do it. I didn't do it. I couldn't have done it,
he would scream, his eyes staring. The thing is impossible,
the thing is impossible. When these spells were upon him,
he would shake, and it would finally be necessary for
his valet to give him a sleeping powder. These things
became noised abroad, and he resigned from his clubs and
went no more, and declined all invitations. He was a
broken man, a hopeless hypochondriac, just a morbid victim of
nerves or drink, said his friends, and dropped him. Things
went on like this for months, and then one day
Blaisdell read another item in the newspaper that dumbfounded him.
It detailed the arrest of a man named Franklin Sears,
who was charged with the murder of Stephen R. Rullins.
But he couldn't have murdered him. I murdered him, murdered him.
In my sleep, mumbled Blaisdell. That afternoon, one of the
sensational newspapers published a picture of Franklin Sears, and Blaisdell
cried aloud in new fright. His valet found him with
a newspaper in his hands, mouthing and trembling, his nerves,
vibrating like a taunt piano wire. For the face that
stared back at Blaisdell from the front page was his
own face, yet Franklin Sear's name was under it. Three later,
Sears confessed to the murder. He told the police that
he and Rollins had been chums and college mates. Rollins
had fallen madly in love with Sear's beautiful sister and
had persuaded her to go away with him under promise
of marriage. They had gone to South America, where Rollins
had a massed of fortune, and had then visited the Orient.
She begged Rollins to make her his wife, but he
refused and finally deserted her. A serious illness followed, and
she sent for her brother, who promised her that he
would not rest until her betrayer had been brought to book.
She died, assured that he would avenge her, and he
had kept his word, although he had to trail Rollins
all over the world before he finally ran him down
in Washington Square. Blaisdell followed the developments in the Sears
case with absorbed attention. He read the newspaper feverishly and
finally decided that he could stand the suspense no longer.
He determined to go to the tombs, confront his counterpart
and tell him the story of the nightmare. Surely there
was an explanation of it all. There must be an explanation.
He had decided to visit Sears the next day when
the last queer thing happened in the tragic series of happenings.
On the morning of Blaisdell's intended visit, Doctor Hamilton read
in his morning newspaper that Franklin Sears, the murderer of
Stephen R. Rollins, had committed suicide in the tombs by
hanging himself to one of the bars by his suspenders.
The paper commented upon the somewhat unusual fact that the
prisoner's watch was found on his body, and that it
had stopped at three o'clock. It was just a few
minutes past three when the body was discovered, still warm,
Doctor Hamilton had scarcely finished reading this account when his
telephone bell rang. The excited voice of Blaisdell's valet asked
him to come at once to his master's apartment, as
something terrible had happened. He responded at once, and when
he was ushered into Blaisdell's bedroom by the white faced valet,
he saw at once that he could do nothing further
for his friend. Blaisdell was dead, and it was very
evident from the stiffness of his body that he had
been dead for many hours. It ain't his being dead
that's so terrible, said the trembling valet. It's it's well.
Look there, he pointed to the throat of the dead man.
There was the distinct mark of a rope upon it,
and this mark extended clear around his head. He he
couldn't have hung himself, quavered the valet, because I was
the first person who saw him, and there ain't any rope.
Some unaccountable impulse made doctor Hamilton pick up Blaisdell's watch
from the dresser. It had stopped running, the hands recording
the hour of three o'clock. The end of the face
that stared back at Blaisdell by Edwin Cardi Renk