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Instead of showing fright, Tanka only smiled. "Go on, shoot me!" he said teasingly.

"Why not?" the girl retorted, laughing.

Bangi Again the loud explosion seemed to split our eardrums.

This time Tanaka rose from his chair, staggered a couple of steps, and then fell to the floor with a thud. At first we only laughed, although we felt that the joke was becoming stale. But Tanaka continued to remain stretched out on the floor, perfectly still and lifeless, and we again began to feel restless. Was it another of his tricks? It was hard to tell, for it was all uncomfortably realistic, In spite of ourselves, we soon knelt down beside him, although we did not exactly know what to do.

The man who had been sitting next to me took the candelabrum from the table and held it up. By its light we found Tanaka sprawled out grotesquely on the floor, his face contorted. The next moment we got the worst fright of all when we saw his blood oozing out of his chest, dripping onto the floor to form a pool.

From all these indications, we quickly surmised that in the second chamber of the revolver, which he had passed off as only a toy, there had been a real bullet. For a long while we stood there, dumbfounded.

Gradually, I began to reason. Had this all been part of Tanaka's program for the night from the very start? Had he actually been carrying out his threat of ultimately taking his own life to make his score of killings an even hundred? But why did he choose this Red Chamber as the scene for his final deed? Had it been his intention to pin the crime on the waitress? But certainly she was innocent, for she had not known the pistol was real when she shot him.

Suddenly, I began to see the light. Tanaka's favorite bag of tricks! Yes, that's what it was! Similar to all his other crimes, he had used the waitress to murder him, and yet had made sure that she would not be punished. With six of us as witnesses, she would, of course, be exonerated. Reasoning thus, I knew that I could not be wrong. The "super-killer" had killed for the last time. Each of the other men also seemed to be wrapped in deep meditation. Plainly, I could read their thoughts as being the same as mine.

An eerie silence fell over the company. On the floor the waitress, who had unwittingly become a murderess, was weeping hysterically beside the body of her victim. In all aspects, the tragedy which had occurred in the candle-lit Red Chamber seemed altogether too fantastic to be a happening of this world.

All of a sudden a strange voice drowned out the waitress's loud sobs. With an icy chill creeping down my back, I stole a glance at Tanaka, and this time I nearly fainted. Slowly, the "dead man" was staggering to his feet. . . .

In the next tense moment, the "corpse" broke the suspense by bursting into laughter, holding his sides as if to prevent himself from splitting. He then turned to us and said mockingly: "You are indeed a naive audience!"

No sooner had he spoken than another surprise was in store for us. This time the waitress, who had been sobbing on the floor, also got to her feet and began to shake with convulsions of laughter. Rubbing our eyes, we automatically, like robots, returned our gaze to Tanaka.

"What—what happened?" I asked sheepishly. "Are we all bewitched?"

In answer Tanaka said: "Look at this." Still chuckling, he held out a nondescript reddish mass on the palm of his hand and invited us to examine it. "It's a small bag made of the bladder of a cow," he explained. "A few moments ago it contained tomato ketchup and was planted inside my shirt. When the girl fired the blank cartridge, I pressed the bag and pretended to be bleeding. . . . And now, one more confession. The complete life story which I related this evening was nothing but a mass of fabrications from beginning to end. But you must admit I was a pretty good actor. You see, gentlemen, as I had been informed that you were all suffering from boredom, I merely tried to give you some excitement. . . ."

After Tanaka had explained all his tricks, the waitress who had served as his accomplice