His clothing, even, is enigma. Textile experts have failed to name the
fine rayon-like fibers of his odd gray tunic and the soiled, torn cloak
we found on the couch. The hard shiny buttons and buckle, like the
bright pliant stuff of his belt and sandals, have baffled the synthetic
chemists.
The weapon we found in the yellow belt seems worth the study of
science, but no scientist yet has made anything of it. It looks like a
big, queer pistol, with a barrel of glass. Its mechanism is obviously
broken, and my attempts to fire it have proved unsuccessful.
How he came into the bungalow--unless in the strange way his manuscript
suggests--we have been unable to conjecture. For the house was securely
locked before we started to the lakes, and no fastening shows to have
been disturbed. A tramp, so the baffled sheriff argues, might break
undetected into an empty house--but, if anything seems certain about
Barry Horn, it is that he was not a common tramp.
The manuscript was written with my own pen, on paper he found in the
desk. The task must have taken him three or four days. The doctors seem
astonished that he was able to complete it. And it must have been a
race with pain and death, for the script is continually more hurried
and uneven, until, toward the end, it is barely legible.
The used dishes and empty cans on the kitchen table show that he found
several meals for himself--the last of which, evidently, he was unable
to eat, for the food was left untouched on the plate. A wrinkled rug
lay with his cloak on the couch, where he slept and rested.
* * * * *
He must have rummaged for something in the medicine cabinet, for we
found that open, and a bottle of mercurichrome smashed on the bathroom
floor. He seems to have made no effort, however, to get medical
assistance. For my telephone was sitting, dusty and untouched, on the
desk where he wrote and died.
He surely perceived the end, for the page beneath his hand was the
opening of a will. Had he lived to complete it, his instructions might
have cleared up much of the monstrous riddle. He had written:
To Whom It May Concern:
I, Barry Horn, being lately returned out of Space and Time to this
my own beloved land and era, finding myself yet clear in mind but
unregretfully aware of approaching death, do make this my last will
and testament.
First I must offer belated apology to the Carridans, the relatives
of my dead wife Dona, for the long bitterness I felt toward them
because they took from me, I felt unjustly, my only son.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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