W ILLIAM WATERS was not in any way what you would call a braggart, yet upon two things did he pride himself. These two things were: first, an earnest and sincere contempt for all things supernatural; and, secondly, a marksmanship with a Colt’s No. 4 revolver which bordered on the marvelous. He had on several occasions proved his bravery by such feats as sleeping alone an entire night in a house said to be haunted, and by visiting a country graveyard at midnight, and digging up a corpse. He had likewise won numerous bets by pumping six bullets into an inch and a half bull’s eye at a distance of sixteen paces, and being a healthy and vigorous animal his pride was perhaps more or less excusable.
In the house in which Waters had his rooms there also lived a Fool. His particular brand of folly was practical joking, which is universally recognized by intelligent men as a particularly acute and dangerous kind of idiocy. As a[24] child The Fool had soaked a neighbor’s cat in kerosene and then applied a match. Since then he had performed many other equally humorous feats.
After much planning The Fool devised a joke, the victim of which was to be The Man Who Knew Not Fear, as the jester sneeringly called Waters.
The prologue to this joke was the substitution of blanks in each of the six chambers of the No. 4 Colt’s, which hung over the headboard in William Waters’s sleeping-room, not as a weapon of defense, but as a glittering little possession dear to the heart of its owner.
The Fool had once, in the presence of all the people at the dinner table, asked Waters what he would do should he wake up at night and find a ghost in the room.
“Fire a bullet straight at his heart, so be sure and wear a breastplate,” Waters answered promptly, and the laugh had been on the joker.
After removing the cartridges from the revolver, The Fool withdrew the bullets from each, and placed them in his pocket. He had that day also laid in a supply of phosphorescent paint and several yards of white muslin.
Waters never locked his door at night, for he was as free from fear of all things physical as from those supernatural. This of course made the program which The Fool had arranged easy[25] to carry out, though he would not have hesitated at a little thing like stealing the key and having an impression made. He was a very thorough practical joker.
That night as the French clock in the hall outside Waters’s room was striking twelve The Man Who Knew Not Fear was awakened by a rattling of chains and a dismal moaning.
As he opened his eyes he saw standing in the darkest corner of the room a white-robed figure, which glistened with phosphorescent lights as it waved its arms to and fro. Without a moment’s hesitation, Waters reached for his revolver, and leveling it at the moaning figure, fired full at its breast.
The Fool, chuckling to himself behind the sheet, thrust his hand upon his heart, and apparently plucking something from the folds of cloth, he tossed back toward the bed a bullet.
The Man Who Knew Not Fear reached for the heavy little object that he had felt strike the bed-clothes, and his hand touching the bit of lead, he picked it up curiously, then realizing what it was that he held, he sat up stiffly in bed, and tried to raise his arm again. But his muscles refused to obey. The thought that his revolver had been tampered with never entered his head. For the first time in his life a fear, sickening and unmanning as it was new, came over him. He recognized in that little piece of lead a bullet from the gun which had never[26] before failed him. What was that moaning Thing upon which powder and lead had no effect? Three times he tried to raise his arm, and each time it fell back upon the bed.
Meanwhile the rattling of chains began once more, and with eyes starting from his head because of his fear, Waters saw the fearsome shape advancing upon him. By a supreme effort he raised his arm, and emptied the remaining five chambers of his revolver at the approaching figure.
The Fool, who had never ceased moaning while the shots were being fired, executed a rapid movement with his hands as if catching the bullets, and then slowly tossed them back, one after the other.
The man in bed reached for the little balls of lead mechanically, then straightened back against the pillow, and remained perfectly motionless, staring at the Thing, which had now stopped again and was groaning dismally.
For five minutes neither man moved, then The Fool, thinking that the joke was once more on him, for Waters still refused to speak, gathered his glittering robe about him, and slunk out.
Back once more in his own room he undressed hurriedly, and slipped into bed. He was disappointed. He had expected that Waters would be terribly frightened, and that he could joke him unmercifully at the table for the next week.[27] Then, too, the obstinate silence of the man puzzled him.
About five o’clock in the morning he woke up vaguely alarmed. He did not know what the matter was, but he could not sleep. He could not get out of his mind that strange silence of the man down-stairs. Then, suddenly, a terrible suspicion came over him.
“Not that, my God, not that!” he cried. Jumping from the bed he threw on a few clothes, and crept fearfully down to the scene of his midnight joke.
He opened the door cautiously, and, feeling for the button, turned on the electric light. Then he gave a hysterical cry, half laugh, half moan, and, rushing from the room, he fled down the hall out into the street.
For this is what he had seen: in the bed propped up stiffly against the pillow, and staring with dull, unseeing eyes into the corner, sat “The Man Who Knew not Fear.” Not a muscle had he moved since The Fool had left him six hours before.
One hand still held the silver-mounted revolver, while in the other were tightly clasped—six little leaden balls.