Free Japanese Tales of Mystery & Imagination by Edogawa Rampo Page A

to herself, and she suddenly felt so sorry for him that tears sprang to her eyes. These sounds meant that her disabled husband was lying on his back, calling impatiently for his only companion by beating his head against the matted floor instead of clapping hands like any ordinary Japanese husband would.
    "I'm coming now. You must be hungry." She spoke softly in her usual manner, even though she knew that she could not be heard. Then she climbed the ladder-like stairs to the small room on the second floor.
    In the room there was an alcove, with an old-fashioned lamp in one corner. Beside it there was a box of matches, but he was unable to strike a light.
    In the tone of a mother speaking to her baby, she said: "I've kept you waiting a long time, haven't I? I'm so sorry." Then she added: "Be patient now for just a moment. I can do nothing in this darkness. I'm going to light the lamp."
    Although she kept muttering thus, she knew her husband could hear nothing. After lighting the lamp, she brought it to the desk in another corner of the room. In front of the desk was a low chair, to which was fastened a printed-muslin cushion. The chair was vacant, and its erstwhile occupant was now on the matted floor—a strange, gruesome creature. It was dressed—"was wrapped" might be more appropriate—in old silken robes.
    Yes, there "it" was, a large, living parcel wrapped in silken kimono, looking like a parcel which someone had discarded, a queer bundle indeed!
    From one part of the parcel protruded the head of a man, which kept tapping against the mat like a spring-beetle or some strange automatic machine. As it tapped, the large bundle moved bit by bit. . .like a crawling worm.
    "You mustn't lose your temper like that. What do you want? This?" She made the gesture of taking food. "No? Then this?"
    She tried another gesture, but her mute husband shook his head every time and continued to knock his head desperately against the matting.
    His whole face had been so badly shattered by the splinters of a shell that it was just like a mass of putty. Only upon close observation could one recognize it as once having been a human face.
    The left ear was entirely gone, and only a small black hole showed where it had once been. From the left side of his mouth across his cheek to beneath his eyes there was a pronounced twitch like a suture, while an ugly scar also crept across his right temple up to the top of his head. His throat caved in as if the flesh there had been scooped out, while his nose and mouth retained nothing of their original shapes.
    In this monstrous face, however, there were still set two bright, round eyes like those of an innocent child, contrasting sharply with the ugliness around them. Just now they were gleaming with irritation.
    "Ah! You want to say something to me, don't you? Wait a minute."
    She took a notebook and pencil out of the drawer of the desk, put the pencil in his deformed mouth and held the opened notebook against it. Her husband could neither speak nor hold a pen, for as he had no vocal organs, he likewise had no arms or legs.
    "Tired of me?" These were the words the cripple scrawled with his mouth.
    "Ho, ho, ho! You're jealous again, aren't you?" she laughed. "Don't be a little fool."
    But the cripple again began to strike his head impatiently against the mat floor. Tokiko understood what he meant and again pressed the notebook against the point of the pencil held between his teeth.
    Once more the pencil moved unsteadily and wrote: "Where go?"
    As soon as she looked at it, Tokiko roughly snatched the pencil away from the man's mouth, wrote: "To the Washios'," and almost pushed the written reply against his eyes.
    As he read the curt note, she added: "You should know! What other place have I to go?"
    The cripple again called for the notebook and wrote: "3 hours?"
    A surge of sympathy again swept over her. "I didn't realize I was away so long," she wrote back. "I'm sorry."
    She expressed her pity, bowed, and