Page:Weird Tales volume 32 number 05.djvu/68

depths of the trunk that Opper knew that at last it must have been heard by another's ears.

"Well, why don't you go on?" said the man. "Go on yelling, and see how much good it does you."

Opper stood there, mouth open slackly, eyes glazing at the sound of the whimper from the trunk. He spoke without knowing he had spoken. It was a weary, numb surrender.

"All right," he said. "All right."

He backed away from the trunk, hands to his lips, staring at it with eyes that could not have been more horrible had they seen Martia Opper's bent form rising from it.

The last of his will snapped.

He began to scream and laugh, staring with a blank face first at the trunk and then at the State trooper. Words dripped from his writhing lips. And after the first few of them, the trooper, his own face whitening a little, manacled Opper's hands and led him like a blind man to his own car, which he drove, leaving his motorcycle beside the road, to the nearest State patrol station. . . .

The sergeant at the station carefully folded a closely written two-page document and put it in his safe. It was the full confession of George Opper, signed by him and duly witnessed.

The motorcycle policeman strode in from the station yard. He had a sledgehammer and a cold chisel in his hands. The edge of the chisel was a little reddened.

"I sure stepped into something," he grunted, "when I stopped that guy for speeding. I told you I was just cruising along behind this sedan when for no reason that I could see it started going like a bat out of hell. Naturally I took out after it and stopped it. Then I got curious about the trunk—all dented in and taped up that way. I fried him a little and he broke and squealed."

"And what squealing!" said the sergeant. "The dirty louse! And if he'd ever reached the swamp he talks about, he might have gotten away with it."

The trooper drew out a cigarette and reached, with fingers that were not quite steady, for a match.

"Damn funny freak of luck that tripped him up," the sergeant went on. "If he hadn't locked that cat in the trunk in the dark——"

The trooper looked up from his match and cigarette.

"Cat?" he said.

"Yeah," said the sergeant. "It's all in the confession he signed while you were out breaking into the trunk. How he locked his wife's cat m the trunk with—with her—and how the cat's whining and whimpering gave him away."

The trooper finished lighting his cigarette.

"He's even crazier than I thought," he said. "There wasn't any cat in the trunk."