I flung back the hideous head, and tore at its ghastly face. It came away in my hands, a painted mask of wax and soft rubber adhesive. Beneath, dark with oozing blood, was the broad, bearded face of Jud Geer. The glazed, protruding eyes, still open, leered up with the fearful grin of death. "Jud!" exclaimed the hollow, surprized voice of Doctor Kyle. "How could he----" * * * * * I rose abruptly to face him. "You needn't act, Doctor," I told him, grimly. "This thing is your planning--though God knows what you hoped to gain by preventing my marriage to Valyne----" "Clay!" he interrupted, still protesting. "Are you mad? Sarah and I have loved you since you were an infant. I was desolated at the thought of your suicide----" "Suicide!" I grasped the word, with sudden understanding. "That's it! You were trying to drive me to kill myself. It's all part of a monstrous plot--everything from that letter you wrote me months ago, to Jud carrying Valyne up here. You were all trying to drive me to insane suicide! But, in Heaven's name, why?" "I'll tell you, Clay." A hard ring came into his hollow voice. "We are poor in Creston. We live and die in bitter, grinding poverty. And we knew that you had made money in the Orient; that if you died, before your marriage, that money would be ours. "The servants were ready to aid us, for a share. Jud Geer was useful, because he wanted Valyne. I shot him because I saw you were getting the better of him; I feared you were about to unmask him. Besides, he was becoming too impatient for his reward. "My studies in the dark secret history of Creston supplied material for the hoax. Some of your forefathers really dealt in the black arts, Clay--some of them must actually have had a hand in the building of this altar. "But out of respect for the dead"--and a twisted smile of terrible mockery crossed his gaunt, skeletal face--"I should tell you that your grandfather, Eliakim Coe, was no more than a common lunatic. He murdered your father in his bed, true enough. And he wrecked your mother's life, if in a manner a little less picturesque than I told you. "And your own youth, in the shadow of that crime, was strange enough to give some color to my account." He smiled again in the red firelight, hideously. "The details should be clear enough, if I mention Jud's private entrance to the cellar----" The rifle lifted a little in his tense grasp. "It was a fair plan, Clay." His voice rang grim and cold with triumphant menace. "And even now it shall not fail me!" His tone sank. "It is known that you and Jud were rivals for Valyne. It is known that you have fought, and that you both are violent men. I shall remove from Jud's body this artistic creation of mine, that made him your brother. And who will be surprized to find the three of you together, dead?"