Japanese Tales of Mystery & Imagination - Edogawa Rampo [53]
"Hello, Mr. Nemoto," I called in a familiar tone, for I had often had him massage me. The next moment, before he could even return my greeting, I gave my warning. "Look out!" I shouted. "Step aside to the left! Step aside to the left!" This, of course, I called out in a tone of voice which sounded as if I were joking.
Just as I had suspected, the masseur swallowed the bait. Instead of stepping to the left, he kept on walking without altering his course.
"Ha! ha! ha!" he laughed loudly. "You can't fool me!"
Boldly, he took three extra large steps to the right, purposely ignoring my warning, and the next thing he knew, he had stepped right into the pit dug by the sewer workers.
As soon as he fell in I ran up to the edge of the pit, pretending to be very much alarmed and concerned. In my heart, however, I wondered if I had succeeded in killing him. Deep down at the bottom of the hole I saw the man lying crumpled up in a heap, his head bleeding profusely. Looking closer I saw that his nose and mouth were also covered with blood, and his face was a livid, unhealthy yellow. Poor devil! In his fall, he had bitten off his tongue!
A crowd soon gathered, and after much effort we managed to haul him up to the street. When we stretched him out on the pavement he was still breathing, but very faintly. Someone ran off to call an ambulance, but it arrived too late: the poor masseur was no longer of this world.
Thus my plan had worked successfully. And who was there to suspect me? Had I not always been on the best of terms with the man, using his services often? Also, wasn't it I who had directed him to step aside to the left in an effort to save him from falling into the pit? With such a perfect setup, even the shrewdest detective could not have suspected even for a fleeting moment that behind my words of "kindly warning" there had lurked a coldly-calculated intention to kill!
Oh, what a terrible way to amuse oneself! And yet, how merry it was! The joy I felt whenever I conceived a new strategy for murder was akin to that of an artist inspired with a new idea for a painting. As for the nervous strain I underwent on each separate occasion, it was doubly compensated for by the overwhelming satisfaction I derived from my successes. Another horrible aspect of my criminal career was that I would invariably look back on the death scenes I had created and, like a vampire smacking his lips after a feast, relish the memory of how the innocent victims of my ruthlessness had spilled their precious life-blood.
Now I shall switch to a new chapter. The season was summer. Accompanied by an old friend of mine, whom I had already selected as my next victim, I went to a remote fishing village in the province of Awa for a vacation. On the beach we found few visitors from the city; most of the swimmers were well-tanned youngsters from the village. Occasionally, along the coast, we saw a few stray students, sketch-books in hand, engrossed in the scenery.
From every viewpoint it was a very lonely, dull place. One big drawback was that there were hardly any of the attractive girls one finds at the more noted bathing resorts. As for our inn, it was like the cheapest of Tokyo boarding-houses; the food was unsavory, and nothing, with the sole exception of the fresh raw fish they served, seemed to suit our taste. My friend, however, seemed to be enjoying his stay, never suspecting that I had purposely enticed him here for but one purpose—to murder him.
One day I took him out to a place where the shore suddenly ended in cliffs, quite a distance from the village. Quickly I took off my clothes, shouting: "This is an ideal place for diving!" and stood poised to leap into the water below.
"You're right!" my friend replied. "This is indeed a wonderful place for diving!" And he too began stripping off his clothes.
After standing on the edge of the precipice for a moment, I stretched my arms above my head and shouted in my loudest