He
snapped the switch savagely, but when he spoke his voice cringed into
the tube:

"I carried her into the storage room. I got the lid off one of the
acid tanks. The vat contained an acid powerful enough to destroy
anything--except gold. In fact, the vat itself had to be lined with
gold-leaf. I knew that in twenty-four hours there wouldn't be a
recognizable body left, and in a week there wouldn't be anything at
all. No matter what the police suspected, they couldn't prove a murder
charge without a _corpus delicti_. I had committed the perfect
crime--except for one thing. I didn't realize that there'd be a
_splash_ when she went into the vat." Gregg laughed, not pleasantly. His wife might think it'd been a sob,
when she heard this record. "Now you understand why I went to the
hospital," he jerked. "Possibly you'd call that poetic justice. Oh,
God!" His voice broke. Again he thumbed off the switch, and mopped his face
with the damp linen. The rest--how could he explain the rest of it? He spent a long minute arranging his thoughts. "You haven't any idea," he resumed, "no one has any idea, of how I've
been punished for the thing I did. I don't mean the sheer physical
agony--but the fear that I'd talk coming out of the ether at the
hospital. The fear that she'd been traced to my office--I'd simply
hidden her rings away, expecting to drop them into the river--or that
she might have confided in her lover ... yes, she had one. Or, suppose
a whopping big order came through and that tank was emptied the very
next day. And I couldn't ask any questions--I didn't even know what
was in the papers. "However, that part of it gradually cleared up. I quizzed Miss
Carruthers, and learned that an unidentified female body had been
fished out of the East River a few days after Dot disappeared. That's
how the police 'solved' the case. I got rid of her rings. I ordered
that vat left alone. "The other thing began about six months ago." A spasm contorted his face. His fingers ached their grip into the
dictaphone tube. "Jeannette, you remember when I began to object to the radio, how I'd
shout at you to turn it off in the middle of a program? You thought I
was ill, and worried about business.... You were wrong. The thing that
got me was _hearing her voice_----"

He gripped the cold cigar, chewed it. "It's very strange that you
didn't notice it. No matter what station we dialed to, always that
same voice came stealing into the room! But perhaps you did notice? You said, once or twice, that all those blues singers sounded alike! "And she was a blues singer.... It was she, all right, somewhere out
in the ether, reminding me....

"The next thing was--well, at first when I noticed it in the office I
thought Miss Carruthers had suddenly taken up with young ideas. You
see, I kept smelling perfume." And he smelled it now. It was like a miasma in the dark. "It isn't anything that Carruthers wears," he grated. "It comes
from--yes, the storage room. I realized that about a month ago. Just
after you sailed--one night I stayed late at the office, and I went in
there.... It seemed to be strongest around the vat--_her_ vat--and I
lifted the lid. "The sweet, sticky musk-smell hit me like a blow in the face. "And that isn't all!" *       *       *       *       *

Terror stalked in this room. Asa Gregg crouched in his chair, felt the
weight of Fear on him like a submarine pressure. His cigar pitched to
his knees, dropped to the floor. "You won't believe this, Jeannette." He hammered the words like nails
into the darkness in front of him. "You will say that it's impossible. I know that. It _is_ impossible. It is a physiological absurdity--it
contradicts the laws of natural science. "_But I saw something on the bottom of that vat!_"

He groped for the bottle. His wife would hear a long gurgle, and then
a coughing gasp....

"The vat was nearly full of this transparent, oily acid," he went on. "What I saw was a lot of sediment on the golden floor. And there
shouldn't have been any sediment! The stuff utterly dissolves animal
tissue, bone, even the common ores--keeps them in suspension. "It didn't look like sediment, either. It looked like a heap of mold ...
grave-mold! "I replaced the lid. I spent a week convincing myself that it was all
impossible, that I _couldn't_ have seen anything of the sort. Then I
went to the vat again----"

Silence hung in the darkness while he sucked wind into his lungs. And
the words burst--separate, yammering shrieks:

"I looked, night after night! For hours at a time I've watched the
change.... Did you ever see a body decompose? Of course not! Neither
have I. But you must know in a general way what the process is. Well,
this has been the exact opposite! "First, I stared at the heap of grave-mold as it shaped itself into
_bones_, a skeleton. "I watched the coming of hair, a yellow tangle of it sprouting from
the bare round skull, until--oh, God!--the flesh began making itself
before my eyes! I couldn't bear any more. I stayed away--didn't come
to the office for five days." The tube slipped from his sweating, slick fingers. Panting, Asa Gregg
fumbled in the dark until he found it. Exhaustion, not self-control, flattened his voice to a deadly
monotone. "I tried to think of a way out. If I could fish the corpse
out of the tank! But I couldn't smuggle it out of the plant--alone. You know that, and so do I. Besides, what would be the use? If acid
can't kill her, nothing can. "That's why I can't have the lid cemented on. It wouldn't do any good,
either! Until three days ago, she hadn't the least color, looked as
white as a ghost in the vat. A naked ghost, because there's been no
resurrection for her clothing....

"I've watched her limbs grow rosy! Her lips are scarlet! Her eyes are
bright--they opened yesterday--and her breasts were rising and
falling--oh, almost imperceptibly--but that was last night. "And tonight--I swear it--her lips moved! She muttered my name! She
turned--she'd been lying on her side--over onto her back!" The record would be badly blurred. His hand shook violently, bobbled
the tube against his lips. Gregg braced his elbow against the desk. "She isn't dead," he choked. "She's only asleep ... not very soundly
asleep.... She's waking up!" The invisible needle quivered as it traced several noises. There was
his tortured breathing, and the clawing of his fingernails rattling
over the desk. The drawer clicked as it opened. The loud click was the cocking of the revolver. "_Soon she's going to get out of that vat!_" Gregg bleated. "Jeannette, forgive me--God, forgive me--but I will not--I cannot--I
dare not stay here to see her then!" *       *       *       *       *

The sound of the shot brought the watchman stumbling along the
corridor. He crashed against the office door. It banged open in a
shower of falling frosted glass. The watchman's flashlight severed the
darkness, and printed its white circle on the face of Asa Gregg.