Otis Adelbert Kline Spins
Another Grisly Yarn—
The Corpse on the Third Slab
OFFICER RYAN walked slowly along between two rows of cold, moist slabs on which reposed the chill, grisly remains of what had once been human beings.
He essayed a few bars of "River Shannon" in his rich, Killarney baritone, not loudly, yet with volume enough to drown the weird uncanny echoes that rang back from the walls and sloping ceiling of the morgue each time his heavy, hobnailed shoes came in contact with the floor.
Though he knew himself to be alone in the room, those echoes somehow gave him a feeling that he was being followed—a queer, creepy sensation that was far from agreeable. He stopped his humming abruptly. What was that? The sound of many voices mimicking his own? Suddenly he realized and laughed. A myriad hollow cackles answered him.
His face grew sober again, and he roundly cursed his superior who had detailed him for special duty in this ghastly place, all because a corpse which nobody could identify, and consequently nobody wanted, had been stolen the night before.
He glanced at the dial of his watch. It was nearly one o'clock. Five long, dreary hours must pass, before he could go home to the wife and kiddies.
An attendant had thoughtfully placed a chair from the office for him at the far end of the room. His instructions were to patrol the place every half hour. As it took him only five minutes to make the rounds, there was twenty-five minute intervals of rest twice in every hour. He hurried his pace a little as he neared the chair. Once seated thereon, he would at least be rid of the sound of those haunting footsteps.
He was walking along, swinging his nightstick with attempted jauntiness, when, out of the tail of his eye, he saw, or imagined he saw a slight movement of
