eyes. The gun in his other hand clattered to the floor. Suddenly he snatched the monkey spoon and flung it down the furnace grating.
"Insane," he mumbled. "I . . . I can't shoot a crazy, crippled old man in cold blood! But . . . Oh, why did you do it?" he groaned, staring at the hunchback. "Why, Mr. Sproull? Why? My best friend, and then my fiancee? I'd gladly have signed over my whole bank account to you, if it was money you . . . !"
"Oh, please!" the antique dealer cried out in despair. "You must believe that I had no part in . . . I tried to phone you, to warn you! Tried to figure out the manner of death, so you could avoid . . . But they all died so differently! Mrs. Haversham, asphyxiated. Your friend, drowned. And your lovely fiancee . . ." The old man's eyes widened suddenly. "Ah! Now I understand! It's true! It all ties together . . . Listen to me!"
Bob Milam had turned unsteadily toward the door, but Mr. Sproull sidled after him like a small persistent crab and seized him by the arm.
"No, no! Wait! You must listen!" he gasped. "The diary mentioned that Schuyler Van Grooten was subject to 'sleeping fits'—a cataleptic. His intimate friends and relatives must have known that, but . . . but they . . . wait!" he begged. "Your monkey spoon, where is it? You must give it away! At once!" the old dealer insisted excitedly. "To . . . to some impersonal agency. The Scrap-metal Drive—yes, that's it! Get it out of your possession, or you, too, will . . . ! So much hate, such hunger for revenge hovers about them! Like a piece of metal that has been magnetized, they can actually draw disaster to anyone who . . ."
But at that moment the blond young man jerked his arm loose and plunged out into the street, wanting only to get away from this crazy old man who had caused him so much grief in the space of a few short days. Mr. Sproull pattered after him, calling excitedly for him to wait. But by the time he reached the curb, Bob Milam had whistled down a passing cab and was climbing into it. The old hunchback hurried to the curb and strained to catch the address. But the young man was only telling the driver, wearily:
"Drive around. Just drive. Anywhere . . . I don't care."
The antique dealer's arms dropped to his sides limply in defeat. He watched the taxi speed out of sight, then turned slowly and walked slowly, thoughtfully, back into his shop.
The evening paper, left under his door as usual, carried the story. A taxi was ambling along 187th Street, where wreckers were busy razing an old warehouse. Somehow the dynamite charge went off sooner than was intended . . . and a crumbling wall of bricks and mortar fell on the cab as it passed. The cabby managed to dig his way out. But the single passenger, an intoxicated young man identified as one Robert Milam of New Jersey, could not be pulled out of the wreckage for almost an hour. He was dead when frantic workmen did finally reach him—not crushed, but trapped without air in the rear seat of the taxi cab...
And in his pocket the police found a peculiar-looking spoon, inscribed with his name, the date of his birth—and the very date of his death!
Mr. Sproull finished reading, then took off his square-lensed glasses and polished them with a hand that trembled. There was nothing, he mused philosophically, really nothing at all that he could have done to save those three nice young people, who had all three died the same way—fighting for breath; smothered to death by one agency or another. Just exactly as Mrs. Haversham had died, in her exhaust-filled garage.
And just as, centuries ago, an old Dutch patroon, one Schuyler Van Grooten, had died—clawing and screaming and gasping for breath in his coffin, awakened from one of his cataleptic trances to find that his greedy heirs had deliberately buried him alive . . .
