The Homicidal Diary.

by Earl Peirce.

What strange compulsion drove an ordinarily gentle and cultured man, on one night of each week, to roam the city streets and commit a ghastly crime?

I am writing this account of my friend Jason Ca.r.s.e in the interests of both justice and psychiatry, and perhaps of demonology as well. There is no greater proof of what I relate than the sequence of murders which so recently shocked this city, the newspaper items regarding the crimes, and especially the official report of the alienists who examined Ca.r.s.e during his trial. I cannot expect to bring Doctor Ca.r.s.e back to life, for he was hanged until dead, but I do hope that this paper will offer new illumination on cases of criminal decapitation.

Justice and psychiatry are closely related, but it is difficult to recognize the judicial importance of so _outre_ a subject as demonology. Yet I emphatically a.s.sert that the case of Jason Ca.r.s.e is irrevocably concerned with evil and dark lore such as mankind has not known since the Holy Inquisition.

One is naturally prejudiced against Ca.r.s.e, for even I myself, his lifelong acquaintance, was struck with repugnance when I first realized the nature of his activities, but his death on the gallows should foreclose biased reflection and permit the student to regard his case in a purely empirical light. As I am the only man in complete possession of the facts, it behooves me to give this astounding information to the world.

Jason Ca.r.s.e was a brilliant and respected criminologist, and at the time of his arrest he was recognized as one of the greatest students of the modern world, a fact which has made his case one of unparalleled notoriety. I was his roommate during the several years we spent in law school, and, although he shot to the pinnacle of his branch of jurisprudence while I was left to more prosaic routine, we never lost the contact which has now become so valuable.

Our correspondence was frequent and regular since we were graduated, and I can say with justifiable pride that Ca.r.s.e respected my friendship as much as that of any other acquaintance, if not more.

It was this intimacy with his personal life which has enabled me, as friend and confidant, to witness the revolting atavism which resulted in such outrageous crimes.

I obtained my first hazy acquaintance with the crimes three months ago when I received Ca.r.s.e's letter from Vienna. He had just discovered sensational evidence in a famous criminal case--one of recurrent human decapitation--and his consequent enthusiasm was so rabid that I was afraid the morbidity of such matters was beginning to pervert his senses. For several years I had become progressively aware of Ca.r.s.e's melancholic att.i.tude, and I had often recommended that he take a vacation from criminal cases. His indefatigable enthusiasm for research was all against my advice, and he had gone relentlessly ahead to the tragic climax which my greatest fears could not have imagined.

This letter from Vienna, so eager with indomitable _il faut travailler_, confirmed my suspicion that Ca.r.s.e had descended into the depressing rut of monomania.

When he returned to America shortly afterward I crossed the country to spend a few days with him, but he was so sickly and irritable that I could do nothing to cheer his spirits. He continually brooded over the case he had been investigating, and I should have known at that time there was a dangerous neurotic compulsion stirring in his subconscious mind.

Less than a week after my departure from the city the first of the horrific head-hunting crimes was committed and the actual drama got under way. I can recall reading the sensational accounts in the newspapers and my anxious fear that this fresh display of criminal perversion would excite Ca.r.s.e into a state nearing hysteria. I telegraphed him that same day, begging his refusal to bother with the case and requesting that he come to visit me. His reply was swift and brief; he had already commenced his investigations of the head-hunting crime and nothing on earth could deter him from his set course.

Knowing him as I did, I could do nothing but hope that the Head-hunter would be swiftly captured and the case brought to a finish. It was an unpleasant shock, therefore, when I read--exactly one week later--that a second and identical crime had been committed.

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 Ca.r.s.e, 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 Ca.r.s.e 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 a.s.saulted, 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 Ca.r.s.e'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 Ca.r.s.e's theory, belied the popular suspicion that the criminal was a homicidal s.a.d.i.s.t. Ca.r.s.e 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 Ca.r.s.e, 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 Ca.r.s.e 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 p.r.o.nounced 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 G.o.d'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 "G.o.d forbid it! G.o.d forbid it!" and frequently he would scream the word "Head-hunter." There was no doubt that Ca.r.s.e 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 pa.s.sed, 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 Ca.r.s.e'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 Ca.r.s.e 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.

Ca.r.s.e did not sleep at all that Sunday night, but paced up and down in his study while a fierce, alarming expression hardened on his features. Nor could I sleep, for his continued pacing tore my nerves to shreds, and I spent the night alternately in my own room and at the partly open doorway of the library, where I was able to watch him in secrecy. Several times I saw him bend over a small book and study it with the intent regard of a disciple, and each time that he referred to a certain page he pounded his fist on the desk and cried to himself: "G.o.d forbid! G.o.d forbid!"

I should have realized what he meant. I should have known and been prepared, but how blind my friendship made me to the horrific implication of those repeated words!

Monday came and went in a slow drizzle of rain which only added to the somber quiet of the city, and as the evening approached and wore on I felt myself caught in the irresistible tide of fearful antic.i.p.ation which warned of the sixth appearance of the Head-hunter. The streets were deserted throughout the day, and with but few exceptions the only pedestrians were police officers, who now traveled in pairs or squads.

The evening papers were brutally frank in predicting that before dawn a sixth headless corpse would be discovered, and this expectation was shared by all.

Ca.r.s.e was at home all day and refused to answer the telephone or to allow me to answer it for him. He ate sparingly, with his same preoccupation, and, contrary to my expectations, he appeared to have lapsed into a state akin to normality, like a man who contemplates a preordained and inexorable occurrence.

At six o'clock he came to me, ghastly haggard and thin, and again asked me to leave his house, but I refused this zero-hour request. He shrugged and went back to his study. I watched him for a while and saw that he was studying that queer little book which so deeply affected him, and I again heard him utter those despairing words: "G.o.d forbid!

G.o.d forbid!"

I went to bed at a little after ten and tried to sleep, but the city-wide excitement seeped into my room and kept me tossing from the thrusts of nightmares. At midnight Ca.r.s.e came up and stopped just outside my door, obviously listening to determine whether I was asleep. The silence was uncanny for a moment; then I heard a sharp metallic clicking and he went on to his room. After he had closed his door, I swept my sheet aside and went to my own door. Ca.r.s.e had locked it from the outside!

I called to him for an explanation of this conduct, but he either didn't hear me or chose to ignore my requests, for the house remained grimly silent. Returning to bed, I managed somehow to doze off.

At two o'clock I was awakened by the sound of someone's walking in the hallway. I sat bolt-upright in bed and heard the unmistakable approach of footsteps coming down the corridor from Ca.r.s.e's bedroom. The tread was stealthy and determined, and as it drew closer to my room I was conscious of a cold mask of sweat clinging to my face, because the footsteps did not sound like those of Jason Ca.r.s.e!

The feeling hit me and hit me again until I was left stunned with the horror of it. It did not sound like Ca.r.s.e! But if it was not Ca.r.s.e, _who was it?_

I wanted to call out his name, yet I felt, with some indefinable sense, that the treader in the hall was unaware that I was in the house, and for that reason it could not have been Ca.r.s.e. I was afraid to make an outcry, and I sat stricken with dread as the footsteps went past my door descending the stairs. A moment later there was a noise of cutlery being moved in the kitchen, and the front door opened and closed.

As it had come, that strange prescience vanished and I tried to reason out what I had heard. Of course the man was Ca.r.s.e; who could it have been save him, for were we not alone in the house? I sat for hours on the bed working up a determination to shake the truth out of him when he returned, but shortly after four o'clock my strength ran out of me and I shook with fear as I heard that awful ghost-like tread ascending the stairs. My heart beat wildly when the person reached my door and twisted the k.n.o.b to enter.

One thought flashed through my head: Thank G.o.d the door was locked!

The terrible feeling that it was not Ca.r.s.e came back upon me, and I sat motionless as I listened to the sounds from outside. For a moment there were no sounds from the intruder, but I did hear a faint tap-tap-tap like that of a liquid falling to the wooden floor. In a minute the k.n.o.b was released and the footsteps continued down the hall to Ca.r.s.e's room.

Any attempt to explain my thoughts as I sat smoking throughout the night would only add to the confusion of these revelations. They were not sane and rational thoughts, but rather strange suggestions and premonitions. I thought myself to be in the presence of a tremendous evil.

In the morning Ca.r.s.e was up early, and moved back and forth in the corridor with strange industry. He was crying, for his sobs came disturbingly to my ears, and once I heard him descend into the cellar and there was a faint digging sound as he performed some outlandish task. Then I heard him in the hallway and on the stairs. I heard the splashing of water and the sound of scrubbing.

I pounded on the door for him to let me out, but it was not until nearly noon that he finished his ch.o.r.es and finally opened my door. He was stooped and fatigued, and without bothering to return my amenities, he turned away and went to his study.