had records screwed on to their necks. And they should go back home,
too, back to Verona, to Venice, to Naples, where their heads lay piled
up in the store-houses for safekeeping until the war was over.
Lieutenant Kadar wanted to run from one man to another, so as to help
each individual to recover his head, whether friend or foe.

But all at once he noticed he could not walk. And he wasn't soaring any
more either. Heavy iron weights clamped his feet down to the bed to keep
him from revealing the great secret.

Well, then, he would shout it out in a roar, in a voice supernaturally
loud that would sound above the bursting of the shells and the blare of
trumpets on the Day of Judgment, and proclaim the truth from Plava to
Trieste, even into the Tyrol. He would shout as no man had ever shouted
before:

"Phonograph!--Bring the heads!--Phonograph!--"

Here his voice suddenly broke with a gurgling sound of agony right in
the midst of his message of salvation. It hurt too much. He could not
shout. He felt as though at each word a sharp needle went deep into his
brain.

A needle?

Of course! How could he have forgotten it? His head had been screwed
off, too. He wore a record on his neck, too, like all the others. When
he tried to say something, the needle stuck itself into his skull and
ran mercilessly along all the coils of his brain.