Murder Mask By EDGAR DANIEL KRAMER _A brief tale about the homicidal effect of wearing a medieval mask._ [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Weird Tales June 1937. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] With conflicting emotions in his faded eyes, the stooped and wrinkled butler bowed Colletti into the sun-flooded drawing-room. "I will tell the master and mistress you are here, sir," the old servitor's cracked voice quavered, as he backed away. "I would as soon meet the Devil!" he spat and crossed himself hastily as soon as he was out of the visitor's sight. "With his hypocrite's smile and his cruel, green eyes!" He shuddered. "Ugh!" Colletti, tall, dark, slender, prematurely graying at the temples, set his hat, gloves and stick on the nearest chair and with the lithe, slinking movements of a velvet-footed jungle beast advanced to the center table. His inscrutable gaze fastened on the gardenia in his lapel, he drew a bit of silk from the inside pocket of his coat. For a clock-tick or two he scrutinized it. Then, sucking in his breath with a reptilian hiss, he let it slip from his tapering fingers to the sun-splashed table top. It lay like a clot of blood on the polished mahogany. From a vest pocket he thumbed a rectangle of pasteboard, dog-eared and time-yellowed, which bore the badly faded, delicately penned legend: Who wears this mask Is doomed to slay Whom he loves best, Ere break of day! As Colletti stood, holding the worn card between his thumb and forefinger, a hideous change crept over him. The ghost of a smile playing about the corners of his thin-lipped mouth grew sardonic. His whole bearing became as deadly, as sinister, as a rattler ready to strike. Like a miasma lifting from a fen, he exuded an aura of evil that polluted the atmosphere around him and took the warmth from the sunlight. His features grew wolfish and hardened into olive granite, while his eyes blazed feverishly, as he thought of his dead grandfather's will, that left all the eccentric importer's estate to his ward, Nita Tosca, in trust for her children, if she married either of his nephews, Antonio Colletti or Tomaso Romani, but divided the income equally among the trio if the girl remained single or married somebody else. In such a contingency, upon the demise of the last of the three, the principal was to be distributed to stipulated charities.