The Seventh Pan Book of Horror Stories Part 3

'Yes indeed,' I murmured politely. 'I see.'

'It's not just a question of money, I have plenty, but my husband likes to work.

Her husband nodded expressionlessly.

'Not that he ever holds anything down for long. He seems to get bored, don't you Henry?'

Henry protested, 'My dear, that isn't strictly true...

'Well not bored exactly, but we like to travel and we do travel, don't we Henry?'

'You're used to it, my dear,' said Henry.

'Yes,' said the woman complacently. 'I'm used to it. I travelled as a girl you see, and my first husband was very well off, so I suppose I got the bug. I met Henry on one of my travels, didn't I Henry?'

'Yes dear.'

'Australia you know. I expect you could tell by the accent He's trying to get rid of it.'

I glanced at the man, but beyond a slight flickering of his sandy eyelashes, his face was still impa.s.sive.

The woman continued, 'So what can you do for us?'

'Well,' I said cautiously, 'your request is a little unusual, but you're perfectly right, the house is empty at the moment, though whether Lord Drummond wishes to let, I have no idea. However, if you will leave the problem with me, I'll see what I can do.'

'Good.' She rose splendidly. 'Will you please let me know, as soon as you have any information?'

'Of course,' I said, 'and I'll do my very best for you.'

'I'm sure you will.' She smiled at me graciously, drew her sable cape round her shoulders, and put on her gloves. 'Come Henry,' she said, and the two of them went out of the room.

I telephoned Lord Drummond almost immediately, and he seemed not averse to the idea. 'I'd have to know more about them of course, and I'd like references and so on, but it might be quite a good thing. The house fell empty when my agent's wife died, and I have no one in mind, as a replacement at the moment. It's a very isolated house, although it's on the estate, so they are unlikely to bother me, but would it bother them do you suppose? Are they townspeople? We'd better have a trial period I think, say eighteen months. One thing I would like to know though, is how they came to discover the house at all?'

I wrote to Mrs Denchworth, telling her what Lord Drummond had said, and including his enquiry and she replied by return of post, saying that she and her husband were delighted; especially her husband, who had set his heart on the house because he had been in England during the war and had been billeted in the village, where he had seen it and fallen in love with it.

In due course their references came through and they met Lord Drummond, who then telephoned me to say that I could proceed with the arrangements as soon as I liked. 'Rum pair,' he said. 'She's pretty ghastly, but he seems quite a decent little chap. Anyway they appear solvent. He has been offered an excellent job here in Blayddon (which is why they want the place) as a constructional engineer, so I'll give it a try. I shall be away most of the winter in any case, so I shan't see much of them, and they're willing to pay quite a tidy price.'

I heard no more from him or the Denchworths until Christmas. Mr Denchworth must have written the card, because the handwriting was different from that on all previous communications. He wrote 'Thank you for arranging this house for us. My wife calls it her Dream Ho#se. So do I. We are both well. Best wishes Marjorie and Henry Denchworth.'

I threw it away with the rest of the cards on January 6th, and thought no more about them until I had occasion to visit Lord Drummond the same month about another of the houses at Blayddon, and being free at tea time or thereabouts, decided to call on them.

Mrs Denchworth seemed pleased to see me. Her husband less so. She graciously gave me tea out of a silver tea pot, being very much the lady of the Manor, and she ordered him about more like a lackey than a husband, and scolded him for putting the milk in his own tea first. 'So common,' she said. I gathered that she was getting on his nerves a good deal, although he didn't say anything, but he went white when she disparaged Australia and corrected his accent, and looked daggers when she ordered him out of the room to get some more hot water for the tea. She however seemed oblivious of any undercurrents of strain, and was very excited about some alterations that Denchworth was doing to the house. 'He's doing them all absolutely single-handed,' she said proudly. 'Building is obviously a side-line of his and he's doing it all quite beautifully.'

When the eighteen months were up, I once again heard from Mr Denchworth.

'My wife and I are not renewing the lease,' he wrote. 'We have been very happy here, and Lord Drummond has been an excellent landlord, but my wife wishes to travel. England gets too cold for her in the winter; she is used to the sun, so we are off to Honolulu in a few weeks' time.'

I happened to run into Lord Drummond shortly after this in St James' Street. After the usual greetings, I remarked that I had heard from the Denchworths, and enquired whether he wished to re-let the house.

'Don't see why not,' he said. 'It was quite a success. They were no trouble at all. Devoted to each other apparently, and kept themselves to themselves. Can't understand it really. Each one to his taste and all that, but she wasn't my idea of a perfect mate. Talk, talk, talk, mean with the purse strings, and years older than he. What's more she made him drop the job for this Honolulu business, and he waf well liked in the village. Spent quite a lot of money on the house too, which seems a waste under the circ.u.mstances. Splendid for me though, of course, so no complaints. First cla.s.s constructional engineer they tell me. First cla.s.s. Ah well, it takes all sorts. All sorts.' He waved his umbrella at me, and we parted.

I only saw Denchworth once again. I had been sent to Jamaica on business, and while I was there, I went to Round Hill for a drink and a swim. Round Hill is one of the most luxurious hotels in the world, and Denchworth looked prosperous and happy. He seemed surprised to see me, but very affable, and enquired after Lord Drummond. I told him that his lords.h.i.+p was well, and not unnaturally asked after his wife. At once his face clouded. 'She's dead,' he said sadly, 'and I miss her terribly.'

'I'm sorry,' I murmured. 'I had no idea.'

'Yes. Very sudden. Very sudden. Never meet anyone like her again.'

Before I could question him further, a very pretty girl came up to talk to him, and since I was now getting late for my business appointment, I hurried away, and soon forgot all about him.

And that was the last I ever saw of him.

I heard from him however, the other day. The letter was posthumous, and it read as follows.

'My dear Andrews, This is rather a delicate matter, and I hesitate to write directly to Lord Drummond, but I think he ought to be told. You will remember that you were good enough to arrange that my wife and I were able to rent his house, Milton House in Blayddon, some few years ago, and his Lords.h.i.+p was very kind to us. Among other things he was good enough to let me do some decorations and alterations. The house needed modernising; actually it needed more bathrooms, and we put these in at our own expense. Lord Drummond expressed himself delighted, which pleased me. What might distress him however, should he or anyone else do any further structural alterations, is that my wife is walled up between the bathroom and the dressing-room of the princ.i.p.al bedroom suite. (My wife always said that 'bedroom suite' was a revolting expression, but I can't describe what I mean more accurately.) 'I married my wife for her money, because, as she quite rightly used to say, I was too lazy to like work. She never stopped nagging at me for this, though what she thought I or anyone else would have married her for at her age, and with her looks, I can't imagine. After five almost intolerable years, I determined to get rid of her. I thought out ways and means, as any murderer must do, and was beginning to despair of arranging it, when an English friend, whom I had met when I was in the Air Force in Britain during the war, wrote to me, and offered me a job in his newly opened factory in Blayddon. Here was my chance.

'You see Milton House was the perfect house for my scheme. I knew it well from the days when I was stationed at Blayddon, and it was also extremely convenient for the job at the factory. Now if it transpired that the house was empty, I was on my way to my heart's desire. I wrote to my friend enquiring about this, and he told me that I was in luck. So I accepted his offer and you know the rest.

'I had a little difficulty persuading my wife to come to you before she herself had seen the house - but she was delighted to be back in the old country - since she herself as you know, was English, and she was also in her own way rather moved that I seemed to want to settle down to earn my own living. I told her that I had fallen in love with Milton, that it was all that I had ever dreamed of as a home, and the perfect setting for her. And indeed that is precisely in the end what it turned out to be.

'Even without Lord Drummond's co-operation in allowing me to make my alterations, Milton was full of possibilities, but he of course made everything plain sailing. I had well remembered from my war-time visits the secret pa.s.sage, dating from the Civil War, in the side of the great open fireplace in the drawing-room, and I remembered how the chimney itself, on its way to the outer air, encroached in a great bay of brick, into the princ.i.p.al bedroom. I only needed to tell my wife that the bay of brick gave the room character, for her to disagree violently, and demand that it be hidden. It was in fact ugly, and Lord Drummond who has considerable taste readily agreed to the wall being built out level with it on either side, especially as one of the two hollow s.p.a.ces so formed, was to be part of the new bathroom - 'My wife's body is in the other.

I won't bore you with details, but when the time came, I inveigled her into this s.p.a.ce, hit her on the head with what is commonly known as a blunt instrument, walled her up, and there she still is.

'Her disappearance was unremarked, because a few weeks previously she had bought an extremely expensive house in Honolulu, which of course I have since sold at a reasonable profit, and also because I had the foresight to suggest that my wife should go to London a week ahead of me, to buy clothes, and so far as anyone in Blayddon knew, I drove her to London with all her luggage, to have her little feminine shopping spree. (Her luggage is I presume, still at Paddington station, at the left luggage office, unlabelled of course.) 'By the time this reaches you, I shall alas have rejoined her, "in the bourne from which no traveller", etc., which simply means in the flowery language that my wife liked so much, that I shall be dead. I have been ill for a year now, and the doctors have p.r.o.nounced me incurable.

I have enjoyed my all too short time on my late wife's money, very much, and among other things I have been able to repay countless kindnesses, since the bank believes my wife to be alive still; her handwriting being fortunately a very easy one to copy.

Lord Blayddon's kindness also requires repayment. Hence this letter.

Yours sincerely, Henry Denchworth.

'PS. I got the idea of walling her up more or less by chance, and since I have come this far in my confession to you, I might as well go further, and tell you that she is my fourth victim.

The remains of my mother and sister are under the cement floor of number 104 Perregrine Place, South Yarra, Melbourne (Australia). I was making alterations to our own home at the time and this seemed an ideal place for the disposal of the bodies. Like my wife they were d&minating women against whom in the end I had to rebel. My third victim was a girl I got into the family way. (Another expression my wife regarded as vulgar.) This murder was discovered, since in order to dispose of her body I had dismembered her and hidden various portions of her anatomy round an isolated farm some seventy miles north of Sydney. Her headless torso in a brown paper flour bag was unfortunately not well enough buried, and again unfortunately, the owner of the farm was executed for the crime since it was not known that I had been in the district that night.

'So you will understand that when it came to the point of deciding to kill my wife, I wished to go back to method A, which had been so successful.

'There was one worrying change in the circ.u.mstances of the last murder, however, and I must say that for a couple of days I was in considerable distress. I told you that I had hit my wife on the head with a blunt instrument, before walling her up. Well I didn't hit her hard enough, and once incarcerated she came to (imagine!) and for two and a half days she screamed, banged on the wall and tried to get free. Worrying for me to say the least and it nearly upset the arrangements. However in the end all was well.

'PPS. My wife considered postscripts both vulgar and effeminate. She had a theory that if one had anything interesting to say one automatically contained it in the letter itself. I trust I haven't bored you. H.D.'

THE STREETS OF ASHKELON.

By Harry Harrison.

Somewhere above, hidden by the eternal clouds of Wesker's World, a thunder rumbled and grew. Trader John Garth stopped when he heard it, his boots sinking slowly into the muck, and cupped his good ear to catch the sound. It swelled and waned in the thick atmosphere, growing louder.

That noise is the same as the noise of your sky-s.h.i.+p,' Itin said, with stolid Wesker logicality, slowly pulverizing the idea in his mind and turning over the bits one by one for closer examination. 'But your s.h.i.+p is still sitting where you landed it. It must be, even though we cannot see it, because you are the only one who can operate it. And even if anyone else could operate it we would have heard it rising into the sky. Since we did not, and if this sound is a sky-s.h.i.+p sound, then it must mean.

'Yes, another s.h.i.+p,' Garth said, too absorbed in his own thoughts to wait for the laborious Weskerian chains of logic to clank their way through to the end. Of course it was another s.p.a.cer, it had been only a matter of time before one appeared, and undoubtedly this one was homing on the S.S. radar reflector as he had done. His own s.h.i.+p would show up clearly on the newcomer's screen and they would probably set down as close to it as they could.

'You better go ahead, Itin,' he said. 'Use the water so you can get to the village quickly. Tell everyone to get back into the swamps, well clear of the hard ground. That s.h.i.+p is landing on instruments and anyone underneath at touchdown is going to be cooked.'

This immediate threat was clear enough to the little Wesker amphibian. Before Garth finished speaking Itin's ribbed ears had folded like a bat's wing and he slipped silently into the nearby ca.n.a.l. Garth squelched on through the mud, making as good time as he could oyer the clinging surface. He had just reached the fringes of the village clearing when the rumbling grew to a head-splitting roar and the s.p.a.cer broke through the low-hanging layer of clouds above. Garth s.h.i.+elded his eyes from the down-reaching tongue of flame and examined the growing form of the grey-black s.h.i.+p with mixed feelings.

After almost a standard year on Wesker's World he had to fight down a longing for human companions.h.i.+p of any kind. While this buried fragment of herd-spirit chattered for the rest of the monkey tribe, his trader's mind was busily drawing a line under a column of figures and adding up the total. This could very well be another trader's s.h.i.+p, and if it were his monopoly of the Wesker trade was at an end. Then again, this might not be a trader at all, which was the reason he stayed in the shelter of the giant fern and loosened his gun in its holster.

The s.h.i.+p baked dry a hundred square metres of mud, the roaring blast died, and the landing feet crunched down through the crackling crust. Metal creaked and settled into place while the cloud of smoke and steam slowly drifted lower in the humid air.

'Garth - you native-cheating extortionist - where are you?' the s.h.i.+p's speaker boomed. The lines of the s.p.a.cer had looked only slightly familiar, but there was no mistaking the rasping tones of that voice. Garth wore a smile when he stepped out into the open and whistled shrilly through two fingers. A directional microphone ground out of its casing on the s.h.i.+p's fin and turned in his direction.

'What are you doing here, Singh?' he shouted towards the mike. 'Too crooked to find a planet of your own and have to come here to steal an honest trader's profits?'

'Honest!' the amplified voice roared. 'This from the man who has been in more jails than cathouses - and that a goodly number in itself, I do declare. Sorry, friend of my youth, but I cannot join you in exploiting this aboriginal pesthole. I am on course to a more fairly atmosphered world where a fortune is waiting to be made. I only stopped here since an opportunity presented to turn an honest credit by running a taxi service. I bring you friends.h.i.+p, the perfect companions.h.i.+p, a man in a different line of business who might help you in yours. I'd come out and say h.e.l.lo myself, except I would have to decon for biologicals. I'm cycling the pa.s.senger through the lock so I hope you won't mind helping with his luggage.'

At least there would be no other trader on the planet now, that worry was gone. But Garth still wondered what sort of pa.s.senger would be taking one-way pa.s.sage to an uninhabited world. And what was behind that concealed hint of merriment in Singh's voice? He walked around to the far side of the s.p.a.cer where the ramp had dropped, and looked up at the man in the cargo lock who was wrestling ineffectually with a large crate. The man turned towards him and Garth saw the clerical dog-collar and knew just what it was Singh had been chuckling about.

'What are you doing here?' Garth asked; in spite of his attempt at self control he snapped the words. If the man noticed this he ignored it, because he was still smiling and putting out his hand as he came down the ramp.

'Father Mark,' he said. 'Of the Missionary Society of Brothers. I'm very pleased to...'

'I said what are you doing here.' Garth's voice was under control now, quiet and cold. He knew what had to be done, and it must be done quickly or not at all.

'That should be obvious,' Father Mark said, his good nature still unruffled. 'Our missionary society has raised funds to send spiritual emissaries to alien worlds for the first time. I was lucky enough..'

'Take your luggage and get back into the s.h.i.+p. You're not wanted here and have no permission to land. You'll be a liability and there is no one on Wesker to take care of you. Get back into the s.h.i.+p.'

'I don't know who you are sir, or why you are lying to me,' the priest said. He was still calm but the smile was gone. 'But I have studied galactic law and the history of this planet very well. There are no diseases or beasts here that I should have any particular fear of. It is also an open planet, and until the s.p.a.ce Survey changes that status I have as much right to be here as you do.'

The man was of course right, but Garth couldn't let him know that. He had been bluffing, hoping the priest didn't know his rights. But he did. There was only one distasteful course left for him, and he had better do it while there was still time.

'Get back in that s.h.i.+p,' he shouted, not hiding his anger now. With a smooth motion his gun'was out of the holster and the pitted black muzzle only inches from the priest's stomach. The man's face turned white, but he did not move.

'What the h.e.l.l are you doing, Garth!' Singh's shocked voice grated from the speaker. 'The guy paid his fare and you have no rights at all to throw him off the planet.'

'I have this right,' Garth said raising his gun and sighting between the priest's eyes. 'I give him thirty seconds to get back aboard the s.h.i.+p or I pull the trigger.'

'Well I think you are either off your head or playing a joke,' Singh's exasperated voice rasped down at them. 'If a joke, it is in bad taste, and either way you're not getting away with it. Two can play at that game, only I can play it better.'

There was the rumble of heavy bearings and the remote-controlled four-gun turret on the s.h.i.+p's side rotated and pointed at Garth. 'Now - down gun and give Father Mark a hand with the luggage,' the speaker commanded, a trace of humour back in the voice now. 'As much as I would like to help, Old Friend, I cannot. I feel it is time you had a chance to talk to the father; after all, I have had the opportunity of speaking with him all the way from Earth.'

Garth jammed the gun back into the holster with an acute feeling of loss. Father Mark stepped forward, the winning smile back now and a bible taken from a pocket of his robe, in his raised hand. 'My son,' he said.

'I'm not your son,' was all Garth could choke out as defeat welled up in him. His fist drew back as the anger rose, and the best he could do was open the fist so he struck only with the flat of his hand. Still the blow sent the priest cras.h.i.+ng to the ground and fluttered the pages of the book splattering into the thick mud. v Itin and the other Weskers had watched everything with seemingly emotionless interest, and Garth made no attempt to answer their unspoken questions. He started towards his house, but turned back when he saw they were still unmoving.

'A new man has come,' he told them. 'He will need help with the things he has brought. If he doesn't have any place for them, you can put them in the big warehouse until he has a place of his own.'

He watched them waddle across the clearing towards the s.h.i.+p, then went inside and gained a certain satisfaction from slamming the door hard enough to crack one of the panes. There was an equal amount of painful pleasure in breaking out one of the remaining bottles of Irish whiskey that he had been saving for a special occasion. Well this was special enough, though not really what he had had in mind. The whiskey was good and burned away some of the bad taste in his mouth, but not all of it. If his tactics had worked, success would have justified everything. But he had failed and in addition to the pain of failure there was the acute feeling that he had made a horse's a.s.s out of himself. Singh had blasted off without any goodbyes. There was no telling what sense he had made of the whole matter, though he would surely carry some strange stories back to the traders' lodge. Well, that could be worried about the next time Garth signed in. Right now he had to go about setting things right with the missionary. Squinting out through the rain he saw the man struggling to erect a collapsible tent while the entire population of the village stood in ordered ranks and watched. Naturally none of them offered to help.

By the time the tent was up and the crates and boxes stowed inside it the rain had stopped. The level of fluid in the bottle was a good bit lower and Garth felt more like facing up to the unavoidable meeting. In truth, he was looking forward to talking to the man. The whole nasty business aside, after an entire solitary year any human companions.h.i.+p looked good. Will you join me now for dinner. John Garth, he wrote on the back of an old invoice. But maybe the guy was too frightened to come? Which was no way to start any kind of relations.h.i.+p. Rummaging under the bunk, he found a box that was big enough and put his pistol inside. Itin was of course waiting outside the door when he opened it, since this was his tour as Knowledge Collector. He handed him the note and box.

'Would you take these to the new man,' he said.

'Is the new man's name New Man?' Itin asked.

'No, it's not!' Garth snapped. 'His name is Mark. But I'm only asking you to deliver this, not get involved in conversation.'

As always when he lost his temper, the literal minded Weskers won the round. 'You are not asking for conversation,' Itin said slowly, 'but Mark may ask for conversation. And others will ask me his name, if I do not know his na. ' The voice cut off as Garth slammed the door. This didn't work in the long run either because next time he saw Itin - a day, a week, or even a month later - the monologue would be picked up on the very word it had ended and the thought rambled out to its last frayed end. Garth cursed under his breath and poured water over a pair of the tastier concentrates that he had left.

'Come in,' he said when there was a quiet knock on the door. The priest entered and held out the box with the gun.

'Thank you for the loan, Mr Garth, I appreciate the spirit that made you send it. I have no idea of what caused the unhappy affair when I landed, but I think it would be best forgotten if we are going to be on this planet together for any length of time.'

'Drink?' Garth asked, taking the box and pointing to the bottle on the table. He poured two gla.s.ses full and handed one to the priest. 'That's about what I had in mind, but I still owe you an explanation of what happened out there.' He scowled into his gla.s.s for a second, then raised it to the other man. 'It's a big universe and I guess we have to make out as best we can. Here's to Sanity.'

'G.o.d be with you,' Father Mark said, and raised his gla.s.s as well.

'Not with me or with this planet,' Garth said firmly. 'And that's the crux of the matter.' He half-drained the gla.s.s and sighed.

'Do you say that to shock me?' the priest asked with a smile. 'I a.s.sure you it doesn't.'

'Not intended to shock. I meant it quite literally. I suppose I'm what you would call an atheist, so revealed religion is no concern of mine. While these natives, simple and unlettered stone-age types that they are, have managed to come this far with no superst.i.tions or traces of deism whatsoever. I had hoped that they might continue that way.'

'What are you saying?' the priest frowned. 'Do you mean they have no G.o.ds, no belief in the hereafter? They must die...?'

'Die they do, and to dust returneth like the rest of the animals. They have thunder, trees and water without having thunder-G.o.ds, tree sprites, or water nymphs. They have no ugly little G.o.ds, taboos, or spells to hag-ride and limit their lives. They are the only primitive people I have ever encountered that are completely free of superst.i.tion and appear to be much happier and sane because of it. I just wanted to keep them that way.'

'You wanted to keep them from G.o.d - from salvation?' the priest's eyes widened and he recoiled slightly.

'No,' Garth said. 'I wanted to keep them from superst.i.tion until they knew more and could think about it realistically without being absorbed and perhaps destroyed by it.'

'You're being insulting to the Church, sir, to equate it with superst.i.tion...'

'Please,' Garth said, raising his hand. 'No theological arguments. I don't think your society footed the bill for this trip just to attempt a conversion on me. Just accept the fact that my beliefs have been arrived at through careful thought over a period of years, and no amount of undergraduate metaphysics will change them. I'll promise not to try and convert you - if you will do the same for me.'

'Agreed, Mr Garth. As you have reminded me, my mission here is to save these souls, and that is what I must do. But why should my work disturb you so much that you try and keep me from landing? Even threaten me with your gun, and...' the priest broke off and looked into his gla.s.s.

'And even slug you?' Garth asked, suddenly frowning. 'There was no excuse for that, and I would like to say that I'm sorry. Plain bad manners and an even worse temper. Live alone long enough and you find yourself doing that kind of thing.' He brooded down at his big hands where they lay on the table, reading memories into the scars and callouses patterned there. 'Let's just call it frustration, for lack of a better word. In your business you must have had a lot of chance to peep into the darker places in men's minds and you should know a bit about motives and happiness. I have had too busy a life to ever consider settling down and raising a family, and right up to recently I never missed it. Maybe leakage radiation is softening up my brain, but I had begun to think of these furry and fishy Weskers as being a little like my own children, that I was somehow responsible to them.'

'We are all His Children,' Father Mark said quietly.