Section 1 of Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories, Volume 2. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by J. C. Guan. Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories, Volume 2. By Julian Hawthorne, Editor. Section 1. My Own True Ghost Story by Rudyard Kipling. As I came through the desert, thus it was, as I came through the desert, the city of dreadful night. Somewhere in the other world, where there are books and pictures and plays and shop windows to look at, and thousands of men who spend their lives in building up all four, lives a gentleman who writes real stories about the real insides of people. And his name is Mr. Walter Besant. But he will insist upon treating his ghost.  He makes his ghost seers talk familiarly, and in some cases, flirt outrageously with the phantoms. You may treat anything from a visoroy to a vernacular paper with levity, but you must behave reverently toward a ghost, and particularly an Indian one. There are in this land ghosts who take the form of fat, called poppy corpses, and hide in trees near the roadside till a traveler passes. Then they drop upon his neck and remain. There are also terrible ghosts of women who have died in childbed. These wander along the pathways at dusk or hide in the crops near a village and call seductively. But to answer their call is death in this world and the next. Their feet are turned backward that all sober men may recognize them.  These haunt well curbs and the fringes of jungles and wail under the stars or catch women by the wrist and beg to be taken up and carried. These and the corpse ghosts, however, are only vernacular articles and do not attack sahibs. No native ghost has yet been authentically reported to have frightened an Englishman. But many English ghosts have scared the life out of both white and black. Nearly every other station earns a ghost. There are said to be two at Simla, not counting the woman who blows the bellows at Syrie-Duck-Bungalow on the old road. Syrie-Duck-Bungalow has a house haunted of a very lively thing. A white lady is supposed to do night watchmen round the house in Lahore. Dalhousie says that one of her houses repeats on autumn evenings all the incidents of a horrible horse and precipice accident. Marie has a merry ghost and, now that she has been swept by cholera, will have room for a sorrowful one. The house has quarters in Myanmar whose doors open without reason and whose furniture is guaranteed to quick, not with the heat of June, but with the weight of invisibles who come to lounge in the chairs. Peshawar possesses houses that none will willingly rent and there is something, not fever, wrong with a big bungalow in Allahabad. The other provinces simply bristle with haunted houses and smarge phantom armies along their main thoroughfares. Some of the dark bungalows on the Grand Trunk Road have handy little cemeteries on their compound, witnesses to the changes and chances of this mortal life in the days when men drove from Calcutta to the northwest. These bungalows are objectionable places to put up in. They are generally very old, always dirty, while the Khantlama is as ancient as the bungalow. He either chatters senali or falls into the long trenches of age. In both moods, he is useless. If you get angry with him, he refers to some sahib dead and buried these thirty years and says that when he was in that sahib's service, not a Khantlama in the province could touch him. Then he jabbers and mows and trembles and fidgets among the dishes and you repent of your irritation. In these dark bungalows, ghosts are most likely to be found and when found they should be made a note of. Not long ago it was my business to live in dark bungalows. I never inhabited the same house for three nights running and grew to be learned in the breed. I lived in government-built ones with red brick walls and rails ceilings, an inventory of the furniture posted in every room and an excited snake at the threshold to give welcome. I lived in converted ones, old houses officiating as dark bungalows where nothing was in its proper place and there wasn't even a fowl for dinner. I lived in second-hand palaces where the wind blew through open-work marble tracery just as uncomfortably as through a broken pane. I lived in dark bungalows where the last entry in the visitor's book was fifteen months old and where they slashed off the curry kid's head with a sword. It was my good luck to meet all sorts of men from sober travelling missionaries and deserters flying from British regiments to drunken loafers who threw whiskey bottles at all who passed and my still greater good fortune to just escape a maternity case seeing that a fair proportion of the tragedy of our lives out here acted itself in dark bungalows. I wondered that I had met no ghosts. A ghost that would voluntarily hang about a dark bungalow would be mad, of course, but so many men have died mad in dark bungalows that there must be a fair percentage of lunatic ghosts. In due time I found my ghost, or ghosts, rather, for there were two of them. But till that hour I had sympathised with Mr. Besant's method of handling them as shown in the strange case of Mr. Loucraft and other stories. I am now in the opposition. We will call the bungalow Kathmandark bungalow, but that was the smallest part of the horror. A man with a sensitive hide has no right to sleep in dark bungalows. He should marry. Kathmandark bungalow was old and rotten and unrepaired. The floor was a worn brick.  It stood on a bypass largely used by native sub-deputy assistants of all kinds from finance to forests. But real sahibs were rare. The Kansama, who was nearly bent double with old age, said so. When I arrived there was a fitful, undecided rain on the face of the land, accompanied by a restless wind, and every gust made a noise like the rattling of dry bones in the stiff, tarry palms outside. The Kansama completely lost his head on my arrival. He had served a sahib once. Did I know that sahib? He gave me the name of a well-known man who has been buried for more than a quarter of a century and showed me an ancient daguerreotype of that man in his prehistoric youth. I had seen a steel engraving of him at the head of a double volume of memoirs a month before, and I felt ancient beyond telling. The day shut in and the Kansama went to get me food. He did not go through the pretense of calling it kana, man's victuals. He said ratub, and that means, among other things, grub, dog's racions. There was no insult in his choice of the term. He had forgotten the other word, I suppose. While he was cutting up the dead bodies of animals, I settled myself down after exploring the dark bungalow. There were three rooms beside my own, which was a corner kennel, each giving into the other through dinghy-white doors fastened with long iron bars. The bungalow was a very solid one, but the partition walls of the rooms were almost cherry-built in their flimsiness. Every step or bang of a trunk echoed from my room down the other three, and every footfall came back tremulously from the far walls. For this reason I shut the door. There were no lamps, only candles in long glass shades, and oil wick was set in the bathroom. For bleak, unadulterate misery that dark bungalow was the worst of the many that I had ever set foot in. There was no fireplace, and the window would not open, so a breezer of charcoal would have been useless. The rain and the wind splashed and gurgled and moaned round the house, and the toady palms rattled and roared. Half a dozen jackals went through the compound singing, and a hyena stood afar off and mocked them.  Then came the ratub, a curious meal, half native and half English in composition, with the old khan shama babbling behind my chair about dead and gone English people, and the wind-blown candles playing shadow-bow-peep with the bed and the mosquito-curtains. It was just a sort of dinner and evening to make a man think of every single one of his past sins, and of all the others that he intended to commit if he lived. Sleep, for several hundred reasons, was not easy. The lamp in the bathroom threw the most absurd shadows into the room, and the wind was beginning to talk nonsense. Just when the reasons were drowsy with blood-sucking, I heard the regular, that has taken heave him over, grunt of dually-bearers in the compound. First, one dually came in, then a second, and then a third. I heard the duallys dumped on the ground, and the shutter in front of my door shook. That's someone trying to come in, I said. But no one spoke, and I persuaded myself that it was the gusty wind. The shutter of the room next to mine was attacked, flung back, and the inner door opened. That's some sub-deputy assistant, I said, and he has brought his friends with him. Now they'll talk and spit and smoke for an hour. But there were no voices and no footsteps. No one was putting his luggage into the next room. The door shut, and I thanked Providence that I was to be left in peace. But I was curious to know where the duallys had gone. I got out of bed and looked into the darkness. There was never a sign of a dually. Just as I was getting into bed again, I heard in the next room the sound that no man in his senses can possibly mistake. The whir of a billoured ball down the length of the slates when the striker is stringing for break. No other sound is like it. A minute afterwards, there was another whir, and I got into bed. I was not frightened, indeed I was not. I was very curious to know what had become of the duallys. I jumped into bed for that reason. Next minute I heard the double click of a cannon and my hair sat up. It is a mistake to say that hair stands up.  That is the hair sitting up. There was a whir and a click, and both sounds could only have been made by one thing. A billoured ball. I argued the matter out at great slent with myself, and the more I argued, the less probable it seemed that one bed, one table, and two chairs, all the furniture of the room next to mine could so exactly duplicate the sounds of a game of billiards. After another cannon, a three-cussion one to judge by the whir, I argued no more. I had found my ghost, and would have given worlds to have escaped from that dark bungalow. I listened, and with each listen the game grew clearer. There was whir on whir and click on click. Sometimes there was a double click and a whir and another click. Beyond any sort of doubt, people were playing billiards in the next room, and the next room was not big enough to hold a billiard table. Between the pauses of the wind, I heard the game go forward, stroke after stroke. I tried to believe that I could not hear voices, but that attempt was a failure. Do you know what fear is? Not ordinary fear of insult, injury, or death, but abject, quivering dread of something that you cannot say. Fair, the trusty inside of the mouth and half of the throat, fear that makes you sweat on the palms of the hands and gulp in order to keep the uvula at work. This is a fine fear, a great cowardice, and must be felt to be appreciated. The very improbability of billiards in a dark bungalow proved the reality of the thing. No man drunk or sober could imagine a game at billiards or invent the spitting crack of a screw cannon. A severe course of dark bungalows has this advantage. It breeds infinite credulity. If a man said to a confirmed dark bungalow hunter, there is a corpse in the next room and there's a mad girl in the next but one, and the woman and man on that camel have just eloped from a place 60 miles away. The hero would not disbelieve because he would know that nothing is too wild, grotesque, or horrible to happen in a dark bungalow. This credulity, unfortunately, extends to ghosts. A rational person fresh from his own house would have turned on his side and slept. I did not. So surely as I was given up as a bad carcass by the scores of things in the bed because the bulk of my blood was in my heart, so surely did I hear every stroke of a long game at billiards played in the echoing room behind the iron barred door. My dominant fear was that the players might want a marker. It was an absurd fear because creatures who could play in the dark would be above such triple fluidities. I only know that that was my terror and it was real. After a long, long while the game stopped and the door banged. I slept because I was dead tired. Otherwise I should have preferred to have kept awake. Not for everything in Asia would I have dropped the door bar and peered into the dark of the next room. When the morning came I considered that I had done well and wisely and inquired for the means of departure. By the way, Kansama, I said, what were these three doolies doing in my compound in the night? There were no doolies, said the Kansama. I went into the next room and the daylight streamed through the open door. I was immensely brave. I would, at that hour, have played Blackpool with the owner of the big Blackpool down below. Has this place always been a dark bungalow? I asked. No, said the Kansama. Ten or twenty years ago I have forgotten how long it was a billiard room. Eh, how much? A billiard room for the Sahibs who built the railway. I was Kansama then in the big house where all the railway Sahibs lived and I used to come across with Brandy Schwab. These three rooms were all one and they held a big table on which the Sahibs played every evening. But the Sahibs are all dead now and the railway runs, you say, nearly to Kabul. Do you remember anything about the Sahibs? It is long ago but I remember that one Sahib, a fat man, and always angry, was playing here one night and he said to me, Mangal Khan, Brandy Pani, do. And I filmed the guys and he bent over the table to strike and his head fell lower and lower till it hit the table. And his spectacles came off and when we, the Sahibs and I, myself, ran to lift him, he was dead. I helped to carry him out. Ah, he was a strong Sahib. But he is dead and I, or to Mangal Khan, I'm still living by your favour. That was more than enough. I had my ghost, a first-hand authenticated article. I would write to the society for psychical research. I would paralyse the empire with the news. But I would, first of all, put 18 miles of assessed cropland between myself and that dark bungalow before nightfall. The society might send a regular agent to investigate later on. I went into my own room and prepared to pack after noting down the facts of the case. As I smoked, I heard the game begin again. Would I miss in bulk this time? For the whore was a short one. The door was open and I could see into the room. Click, click, that was a cannon. I entered the room without fear, for there was sunlight within and a fresh breeze without. The unseen game was going on at a tremendous rate.   Impossible to mistake the sound of billiard balls. Impossible to mistake the whore of a ball over the slate. But I was to be excused. Even when I shut my enlightened eyes, the sound was marvelously like that of a fast game. I entered angrily, the faithful partner of my sorrows. The bungalow is very bad and low-caste. I wondered the presence was disturbed and is speckled. Three sets of duly bearers came to the bungalow last night when I was sleeping outside and said that it was their custom to rest in the room set apart for the English people. What honour has the Kansama? They tried to enter, but I told them to go. No wonder these orias have been here and the presence is sorely spotted. It is shame and the work of a dirty man. Kadir Baksh did not say that he had taken from each gang two anas for rent in advance, and then, beyond my ear-shot, had beaten them with a big green umbrella whose use I could never before divine. But Kadir Baksh had no notions of morality. There was an interview with the Kansama, but as he promptly lost his head, Rath gave place to Pity, and Pity led to a long conversation in the course of which he put the fat engineer Saheb's tragic death in three separate stations, two of them 50 miles away. The third shift was to Kolkata, and there the Saheb died while driving a dog cart.  I did not go away as soon as I intended. I'd stayed for the night, while the wind and the rat and the sash and the window-bolt played a ding dong, 150 up. Then the wind ran out, and the billiard stopped, and I felt that I had ruined my one ginwine, hallmarked ghost story. Had I only stopped at the proper time, I could have made anything out of it. That was the bitterest thought of all. End of Section 1. Recording by J. C. Kwan, Montreal, January 2010. Section 2 of Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories, Volume 2. This is a LibriVox recording. Our LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by J. C. Kwan, Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories, Volume 2. By Julian Hawthorne, Editor. Section 2. The Sending of Dana Day by Woodard Kipling. When the devil rides on your chest, remember the Chamar. Native proverb. Once upon a time, some people in India made a new heaven and a new earth out of broken teacups, a missing brooch or two, and a hairbrush. These were hidden under bushes or stuffed into holes in the hillside and an entire civil service of subordinate gods used to find or mend them again. And everyone said there are more things in heaven and earth than are drained in our philosophy. Other things happened also, but the religion never seemed to get much beyond its first manifestations, though it added an airline postal dock and orchestral effects in order to keep abreast of the times and stall off competition. These religion was too elastic for ordinary use. It stretched itself and embraced pieces of everything that medicine men of all ages have manufactured. It approved and stole from Freemasonry, looted the latter-day rossicrucians of half their pet words, took any fragment of Egyptian philosophy that it found in the encyclopedia Britannica and next as many of the Vedas as had been translated into French or English and talked of all the rest, built in the German versions of what is left of the Zandavesta, encouraged white, grey and black magic including spiritualism, palmistry, fortune-telling by cards, hot chestnuts, double-cerneled nuts and tallow droppings. What have adopted Voodoo and Obu had known anything about them and showed itself in every way one of the most accommodating arrangements that had ever been invented since the birth of the sea. When it was in thorough working order would all the machine read down to the subscriptions complete. Dana Day came from nowhere with nothing in his hands and wrote a chapter in its history which has hitherto been unpublished. He said that his first name was Dana and his second was Day. Now, sitting aside Dana of the New York Sun Dana is a Bahil name and Day fits no native of India unless you accept the Bengali Day as the original spelling. Day is Lap or Finnish and Dana Day was neither Finn, Chin, Bahil, Benga, Lap, Nair, Gond, Romani, Muck, Bokariat, Curd, Armenian, Leventine, Jew, Persian, Punjabi, Madrasi, Persi nor anything else known to ethnologists. He was simply Dana Day and declined to give further information. For the sake of brevity and as roughly indicating his origin he was called the native. He might have been the original old man of the mountains who is said to be the only authorized head of the tea-cup creed. Some people said that he was but Dana Day used to smile and deny any connection with the cult explaining that he was an independent experimenter. As I have said, he came from nowhere with his hands behind his back and studied the creed for three weeks sitting at the feet of those best competent to explain its mysteries. Then he laughed aloud and went away but the laugh might have been either of devotion or derision. When he returned he was without money but his pride was unabated. He declared that he knew more about the things in heaven and earth than those who taught him and for this, contumacy was abandoned altogether. His next appearance in public life was at a big cantonment in Upper India and he was then telling fortunes with the help of three laden dyes, a very dirty old cloth and a little tin box of opium pills. He told better fortunes when he was allowed half a bottle of whiskey but the things which he invented on the opium were quite worth the money. He was in reduced circumstances. Among other peoples he told the fortune of an Englishman who had once been interested in the Simla creed but who later on had married and forgotten all his old knowledge in the study of babies and exchange. The Englishman allowed Dayna Day to tell a fortune for charity's sake and gave him five rupees, a dinner and some old clothes. When he had eaten, Dayna Day professed gratitude and asked if there were anything he could do for his host in the esoteric line. Is there anyone that you love? said Dayna Day. The Englishman loved his wife but had no desire to drag her name into the conversation. He therefore shook his head. Is there anyone that you hate? said Dayna Day. The Englishman said that there were several men whom he hated deeply. Very good! said Dayna Day upon whom the whiskey and the opium were beginning to tell.   It is a thing sent by a wizard and may take any form but most generally wanders about the land in the shape of a little purple cloud till it finds the sandy and him it kills by changing into the form of a horse or a cat or a man without a face. It is not strictly a native patent though shamars can, if irritated dispatch ascending which sits on the breast of their enemy by night and nearly kills him. Very few natives care to irritate shamars for this reason. Let me dispatch ascending said Dayna Day.  I can send ascending anywhere you choose and in any form except in the shape of a man. The Englishman had no friends that he wished to kill but partly to suit Dayna Day whose eyes were rolling and partly to see what would be done he asked whether a modified ascending could not be arranged for such ascending as should make a man's life a burden to him and yet do him no harm. If this were possible he notified his willingness to give Dayna Day 10 rupees for the job. I am not what I was once said Dayna Day and I must take the money because I am poor. To what Englishman so much send it? Send ascending to Lone Sahib said the Englishman naming a man who had been most bitter in rebuking him for his apostasy from the teacup creed Dayna Day laughed and nodded I could have chosen no better man myself said he I will see that he finds the ascending about his path and about his bed he lay down on the earth rug turned up the whites of his eyes shivered all over and began to snort this was magic or opium or descending or all three when he opened his eyes he vowed that descending had started upon the war path and was at that moment flying up to the town where Lone Sahib lives give me my 10 rupees said Dayna Day warily and write a letter to Lone Sahib telling him and all who believe with him that you and a friend are using a power greater than theirs they will see that you are speaking the truth he departed on steadily with the promise of some more repeats if anything came of descending the Englishman sent a letter to Lone Sahib couched in what he remembered of the terminology of the creed he wrote I also in the days of what you held to be my backsliding have obtained enlightenment and with enlightenment has come power then he grew so deeply mysterious that the recipient of the letter could make neither head nor tail of it and was proportionately impressed for he fancied that his friend had become a fifth rounder when a man is a fifth rounder he can do more than slate and hooten combined Lone Sahib read the letter in five different fashions and was beginning a sixth interpretation when his bearer dashed in with the news that there was a cat on his bed now if there was one thing that Lone Sahib hated more than another it was a cat he rated the bearer for not turning it out of the house the bearer said that he was afraid all the doors of the bedroom had been shut throughout the morning and no real cat could possibly have entered the room he would prefer not to meddle with the creature Lone Sahib entered the room gingerly and there on the pillow of his bed sprawled and whimpered a wee white kitten not a jumpsome frisky little beast but a slug-like crawler with its eyes barely open and its paws lacking strength or direction a kitten that ought to have been in a basket with its mama Lone Sahib caught it by the scruff of its neck handed it over to the sweeper to be drowned and find the bearer for Arnaz that evening as he was reading in his room he fancied that he saw something moving about on the hearth rug outside the circle of light from his reading lamp when the thing began to meow he realized that it was a kitten a wee white kitten nearly blind and very miserable he was seriously angry and spoke bitterly to his bearer who said that there was no kitten in the room when he brought in the lamp and real kittens of tender age generally had mudger cats in attendance if the present will go out into the veranda and listen said the bearer he will hear no cats how therefore can the kitten on the bed and the kitten on the hearth rug be real kittens Lone Sahib went out to listen and the bearer followed him but there was no sound of Rachel mewing for her children he returned to his room having hurled the kitten down the hillside and wrote out the incidents of the day for the benefit of his co-religionist those people were so absolutely free from superstition that they ascribed anything a little out of the common to agencies as it was their business to know all about the agencies they were on terms of almost indecent familiarity with manifestations of every kind their letters dropped from the ceiling unstamped and spirits used to squatter up and down their staircases all night but they had never come into contact Lone Sahib wrote out the fact noting the hour and the minute as every psychical observer is bound to do and depending the Englishman's letter because it was the most mysterious document and might have had a bearing upon anything in this world or the next an outsider would have translated all the tangled dice look out you laughed at me once and now I'm going to make you sit up Lone Sahib's co-religionists found that meaning in it but their translation was refined and full of four syllable words they held a ceteront and were filled with tremulous joy for in spite of their familiarity with all the other worlds and cycles they had a very human awe of things sent from ghost land they met in Lone Sahib's room in shrouded and supple-crawl gloom and their conclave was broken up by a clinking among the photo frames on the mental piece a wee white kitten nearly blind was looping and writhing itself between the clock and the candlesticks that stopped all investigations or doubtings here was the manifestation into flesh it was so far as could be seen the void of purpose but it was a manifestation of undoubted authenticity they drafted a round robin to the Englishman the back-sider of old days adjuring him in the interests of the creed to explain whether there was any connection between the embodiment of some Egyptian god or other I have forgotten the name and his communication they called the kitten raw or sham or something and when Lone Sahib confessed that the first one had at his most misguided instance been drowned by the sweeper they said consolingly that in his next life he would be a bounder and not even a rounder of the lowest grade these words may not be quite correct but they expressed the sense of the house accurately when the Englishman received the round robin it came by post he was startled and bewildered he sent in to the bazaar for day in a day who read the letter and laughed that is my sending said he I told you I would work well now give me another ten rupees but what in the world is this gibberish about the Egyptian gods asked the Englishman cats said day in a day with a hiccough for he had discovered the Englishman's whiskey bottle cats and cats and cats never was such a sending a hundred of cuts now give me ten more rupees and write as I dictate day in a day's letter was a curiosity it bore the Englishman's signature and hinted at cats at the sending of cats the mere words on paper were creepy and uncanny to behold what have you done though said the Englishman I am as much in the dark as ever do you mean to say that you can actually send this absurd sending you talk about George for yourself said day in a day what does that letter mean in a little time they will all be at my feet and yours and I, oh glory will be drugged or drunk or lay long day in a day knew his people when a man who hates cats wakes up in the morning and finds a little squirming kitten on his breast or puts his hand into his oldster pocket and finds a little half-dead kitten where his gloves should be or opens his trunk and finds a vile kitten among his stress shirts or goes for a long ride with Macintosh strapped on his saddle-bow and shakes a little sprawling kitten from its foals when he opens it or goes out to dinner and finds a little blind kitten under his chair or stays at home and finds a writhing kitten under the quilt or wriggling among his boots or hanging head downward in his tobacco jar or being mangled by his terrier in the veranda when such a man finds one kitten neither more nor less in a place where no kitten rightly could or should be he is naturally upset when he dare not murder his daily trove because he believes it to be a manifestation an emissary an embodiment and have a dozen other things all out of the regular course of nature he is more than upset he is actually distressed some of Lonesaib's co-religionists thought that he was a highly favoured individual but many said that if he had treated the first kitten with proper respect as suited as Tothra Tum Sinakirib embodiment all his trouble would have been averted they compared him to the ancient mariner but nonetheless they were proud of him and proud of the Englishman who had sent the manifestation they did not call it ascending because Icelandic magic was not in their program after sixteen kittens that is to say after a fortnight for there were three kittens on the first day to impress the fact of descending the whole camp was uplifted by a letter it came flying through a window from the old man of the mountains the head of all the creed explaining the manifestation in the most beautiful language and soaking up all the credit of it for himself the Englishman said the letter was not there at all he was a backslider without power or asceticism who couldn't even raise a table by force of volition much less project an army of kitten through space the entire arrangement said the letter was strictly orthodox worked and sanctioned by the highest authorities in all of the creed there was great joy at this for some of the weaker brethren seeing that an outsider who had been working on independent lines could create kittens whereas their own rulers had never gone beyond crockery and broken at that were showing a desire to break a line on their own trail in fact there was the promise of ischism a second round robin was drafted to the Englishman beginning an ending with a selection of curses from the rites of misraim and menfess and the combination of djugana who was a fifth rounder upon whose name an upstart third rounder once traded a papal excumunication is a biadu compared to the combination of djugana the Englishman had been proved under the hand and seal of the old man of the mountains he created virtue and pretended to have power which in reality belonged only to the supreme head naturally the round robin did not spare him he handed the letter to dana day to translate into decent English the effect on dana day was curious at first he was furiously angry and then he laughed for five minutes he was taught that they would have come to me in another week I would have shown that I sent descending and they would have discrowned the old man of the mountains who has sent descending of mine do you do nothing the time has come for me to act right as I dictate and I will put them to shame but give me ten more rupees at dana day's dictation the Englishman wrote nothing less than a formal challenge to the old man of the mountains it wound up and if this manifestation be from your hand then let it go forward but if it be from my hand I will that the sending shall cease in two days time on that day there shall be twelve kittens and sends forward none at all the people shall judge between us this was signed by dana day who added pentacles and pentagrams in a crook sansata and half a dozen swastikas in a triple tau to his name just to show that he was all he laid claim to be the challenge was read out to the gentlemen and ladies and they remembered then that dana day had laughed at them some years ago it was officially announced that the old man of the mountains would treat the matter with contempt dana day being an independent investigator without a single round at the back of him but this did not soothe his people they wanted to see a fight they were very human for all their spirituality lone sahib who was really being worn out with kittens submitted meekly to his fate he felt that he was being wanted to prove the power of dana day as the poet says when the stated day dawned the shower of kittens began some were white and some were tabby and all were about the same loathsome age three were on his hearth rug three in his bathroom and the other six turned up at intervals among the visitors who came to see the prophecy break down never was a more satisfactory sending on the next day there were no kittens and the next day and all the other days were kittenless and quiet the people murmured and looked to the old man of the mountains for an explanation a letter written on a palm leaf dropped from the ceiling but everyone except lone sahib felt that letters were not what the occasion demanded there should have been cats there should have been cats full ground once the letter proved conclusively that there had been a hitch in the psychic current which colliding with a dual identity had interfered with the precipiant activity all along the main line the kittens were still going on but owing to some failure in the developing fluid they were not materialized the air was thick with letters for a few days afterwards unseen hands played gluk and Beethoven on finger-balls and clock shades but all men felt that psychic life was a mockery without materialized kittens even lone sahib shouted with the majority on this head Dana Day's letters were very insulting and if he had then offered to lay the new departure there is no knowing what might not have happened but Dana Day was dying of whiskey and opium in the Englishman's go-down and had small heart for new creeds they have been put to shame said he never was such ascending it has killed me nonsense said the Englishman you are going to die Dana Day and that sort of stuff must be left behind I'll admit that you have made some queer things come about tell me honestly now how was it done give me ten more rupees said Dana Day faintly and if I die before I spend them bury them with me the silver was counted out while Dana Day was fighting with death his hand closed upon the money and he smiled a grim smile bent low he whispered the Englishman bent bonia mission school expelled peddler all my English education outcasted and made up named Dana Day England with American thought-reading man and you gave me ten rupees several times I gave the sahibs better two-eighths a month for cats little cats I wrote and he put them about very clever man very few kittens now in the bazaar ask Lon Sahib sweeper's wife so saying Dana Day gasped and passed away into a land where if all be true there are no materializations and the making of new creeds is discouraged but consider the gorgeous simplicity in the house of Suthu by Rudyard Kipling a stone's throw out on either hand from that well-ordered road we tread and all the world is wild and strange trell and gull and gin and sprite shall bear us company tonight for we have reached the oldest land where in the powers of darkness range from the dusk to the dawn the house of Suthu near the Tascali gate is two-storied with four carved windows of old brown wood and a flat roof you may recognize it by five red handprints arranged like the five of diamonds on the white wash between the upper windows Bahagvan Das the banya and a man who says he gets his living by seal cutting with a troop of wives servants friends and retainers the two upper rooms used to be occupied by Jannu and Azizum and a little black and tan terrier that was stolen from an Englishman's house and given to Jannu by a soldier today only Jannu lives in the upper rooms Suthu sleeps on the roof generally except when he sleeps in the street he used to go to Peshawar in the cold weather to visit his son who sells curiosities near the Edward's gate and then he slept under a real mud roof Suthu is a great friend of mine because his cousin had a son who secured thanks to my recommendation the post of head messenger to a big firm in the station Suthu says that God will make me a lieutenant governor one of these days I dare say his prophecy will come true he is very very old with white hair and no teeth were showing and he has outlived his wits outlived nearly everything except his fondness for his son at Peshawar Jannu and Azizum are Kashmiris ladies of the city and theirs was an ancient and more or less honorable profession but Azizum has since married a medical student from the north west and has settled down to a most respectable life somewhere near Bareli Bhagawan Das is an extortionate and an adulterator he is very rich the man who is supposed to get his living by seal cutting pretends to be very poor this lets you know as much as is necessary of the four principle tenants then there is me of course but I am only the chorus that comes in at the end to explain things so I do not count Sudhu was not clever the man who pretended to cut seals was the cleverest of them all Bhagawan Das only knew how to lie except Jannu she was also beautiful but that was her own affair Sudhu's son at Peshawar was attacked by pleurisy and old Sudhu was troubled the seal cutter man heard of Sudhu's anxiety and made capital out of it he was abreast of the times he got a friend in Peshawar to telegraph daily accounts of the son's health and here the story begins Sudhu's cousin's son told me in the evening that Sudhu wanted to see me that he was too old and feeble to come personally and that I should be conferring an everlasting honour on the house of Sudhu if I went to him I went but I think seeing how well off Sudhu was then that he might have sent something better than an Ekka which jolted fearfully to haul out a future lieutenant governor on a muggy April evening the Ekka did not run quickly it was full dark when we pulled up opposite door of Ranjit Singh's tomb near the main gate of the fort here was Sudhu and he said that by reason of my condescension it was absolutely certain that I should become a lieutenant governor while my hair was yet black then we talked about the weather and the state of my health and the wheat crops for 15 minutes in the huzuri bag under the stars Sudhu came to the point at last he said that Janu had told him that there was an order of the sirka against magic because it was feared that magic might one day kill the empires of India I didn't know anything about this state of the law but I fancied that something interesting was going to happen I said that so far from magic being discouraged by the government it was highly commended the greatest officials of the state practised it themselves if the financial statement is in magic I don't know what is then to encourage him further I said that if there was any Janu afoot I had not the least objection to giving it my countenance and sanction and to seeing that it was clean Janu white magic as distinguished from the unclean Janu which kills folk it took him a long time before Sudhu admitted that this was just what he had asked me to come for then he told me in jerks and quivers that the man who said he quote seals was a sorcerer of the cleanest kind that every day he would see the face of his sick son in Peshawar more quickly than the lightning could fly and that this news was always corroborated by the letters further that he had told Sudhu how a great danger was threatening his son which could be removed by clean Janu and of course heavy payment I began to see exactly how the land lay that I also understood a little Janu in the western line and would go to his house to see that everything was done decently and in order we set off together and on the way Sudhu told me that he had paid the seal cutter between 100 and 200 rupees already and the Janu of that night would cost 200 more which was cheap during the greatness of his son's danger but I do not think he meant it the lights were all cloaked in the front of the house when we arrived I could hear awful noises from behind the seal cutter's front shop as if someone were groaning his soul out Sudhu shook all over and while we groped our way upstairs told me that the Janu had begun Janu and Azizm met us at the stair-head and told us that the Jadu work was coming off in their rooms because there was more space there Janu is a lady of a free-thinking turn of mind she whispered that the Jadu was an invention to get money out of Sudhu and that the seal cutter would go to a hot place when he died Sudhu was nearly crying with fear and old age he kept walking up and down the room in the half-light repeating his son's name over and over again and asking Azizm if the seal cutter ought not to make a reduction in the case of his own landlord Janu pulled me over to the shadow in the recess of the card-bar windows the boards were up and the rooms were only lit by one tiny oil lamp there was no chance of being seen if I stayed still presently the groans below ceased and we heard steps on the staircase that was the seal cutter he stopped outside the door as the terrier barked and Azizm fumbled at the chain and he told Sudhu to blow out the lamp this left the place in jet darkness except for the red glow from the two hukkas to Janu and Azizm the seal cutter came in and I heard Sudhu throw himself down on the floor and groan Azizm caught her breath and Janu backed on to one of the beds with a shutter there was a clink of something metallic and then shut up a pale blue-green flame near the ground the light was just enough to show Azizm left against one corner of the room with the terrier between her knees Janu with her hands clasped leaning forward as she sat on the bed Sudhu faced down quivering and the seal cutter I hope I may never see another man like that seal cutter he was stripped to the waist with a wreath of white jasmine as thick as my wrist round his forehead a salmon-coloured loincloth round his middle and a steel bangle on each ankle this was not awe-inspiring it was the face of the man that turned me cold it was blue grey in the first place in the second the eyes were rolled back till you could only see the whites of them and in the third the face of a demon a ghoul anything you please except of the sleek, oily old Rufian who sat in the daytime over his turning lace downstairs he was lying on his stomach with his arms turned and crushed behind him as if he had been thrown down pinioned his head and neck were the only part of him after floor they were nearly at right angles to the body like the head of a cobra at spring it was ghastly in the centre of the room on the bare earth floor stood a big, deep brass basin with a pale blue-green light floating in the centre like a nightlight round that basin the man on the floor wriggled himself three times how he did it I do not know I could see the muscles ripple along his spine and fall smooth again but I could not see any other motion the head seemed the only thing alive about him except that slow curl and uncurl of the laboring back muscles Trinu from the bed was breathing 70 to the minute Azizim held her hands before her eyes and also too fingering at the earth that had gotten to his white beard was crying to himself the horror of it was that the creeping, crawly thing made no sound only crawled and remember this lasted for ten minutes while the terrier wind and Azizim shuddered and Jinu gasped and so too cried I felt the hair lift at the back of my head and my heart thump like a thermantidote paddle luckily the seal cutter betrayed himself by his most impressive trick and made me calm again after he had finished that unspeakable crawl he stretched his head away from the floor as high as he could and sent out a jet of fire from his nostrils now I knew how fire spouting is done I can do it myself so I felt at ease the business was a fraud if he had only kept to that crawl without trying to raise the effect goodness knows what I might not have thought but the girls shrieked at the jet of fire and the head dropped chained down on the floor with a thud the whole body lying then like a corpse with his arms thrust there was a pause of five full minutes after this and the blue-green flame died down Janus tipped to settle one of her anklets wallazism turned her face to the wall and took the terrier in her arms so too put out an arm mechanically to Janus' hookah and she slid it across the floor with her foot directly above the body and on the wall were a couple of flaming portraits in stamped paper frames of the queen and the Prince of Wales they looked down on the performance and to my thinking seemed to heighten the grotesqueness of it all just when the silence was getting unendurable the body turned over and rolled away from the basin to the side of the room where it lay stomach up there was a faint plop from the basin exactly like the noise a fish makes when it takes a fly and the green light in the center revived I looked at the basin and saw bobbing in the water the dried shriveled black head of a native baby open eyes open mouth and shaved scalp it was worse being so very sudden than the crawling exhibition we had no time to say anything before it began to speak read Poe's account of the voice that came from the mesmerized dying man and you will realize less than one half of the horror of that head's voice there was an interval of a second or two between each word and a sort of ring ring ring in the note of the voice like the timber of a bell it peeled slowly as if talking to itself for several minutes before I got rid of my cold sweat then the blessed solution struck me I looked at the body lying near the doorway and saw just where the hollow of the throat joins on the shoulders a muscle that had nothing to do with any man's regular breathing twitching away steadily the whole thing was a careful reproduction of the Egyptian that one reads about sometimes and the voice was as clever and as appalling a piece of ventriloquism as one could wish to hear all this time the head was lip lip lapping against the side of the basin and speaking to who on his face again whining of his son's illness and of the state of the illness up to the evening of that very night I always shall respect the seal cutter for keeping so faithfully to the time of the Peshawar telegrams it went on to say that skilled doctors were night and day watching over the man's life and that he would eventually recover if the feet to the potent sorcerer whose servant was the head in the basin were doubled here the mistake from the artistic point of view came in to ask for twice your stipulated fee in a voice that Lazarus might have used when he rose from the dead is absurd Janu who is really a woman of masculine intellect saw this as quickly as I did I heard her say Arshnahim Farayb scornfully under her breath and just as she said so the light in the basin died out the head stopped talking and we heard the room door creak on its hinges then Janu struck a match lit the lamp and we saw that head, basin and seal cutter were gone said who was wringing his hands and explaining to anyone who cared to listen that if his chances of eternal salvation depended on it he could not raise another 200 rupees Azizan was nearly in hysterics in the corner while Janu sat down compositely on one of the beds to discuss the probabilities of the whole thing being a bunaw or makeup I explained as much as I knew of the seal cutter's way of Janu but her argument was much more simple the magic that is always demanding gifts is no true magic said she my mother told me that the only potent love spells are those which are told you for love the seal cutter man is a liar and a devil I dare not tell you do anything or get anything done because I am in depth to Bahagvan Das the bunia for two gold rings and a heavy anklet I must get my food from his shop the seal cutter is the friend of Bahagvan Das and who would poison my food a false to-do has been going on for ten years and has cost to do many rupees each night the seal cutter used black hands and lemons and mantras before he never showed us anything like this till tonight Azizan is a fall and will be a pardahashnin soon so who has lost his strength and his wits see now I had hoped from so who many rupees while he lived and many more after his death and behold he is spending everything on that offspring of a devil and a she-ass the seal cutter here I said but what induced so too to drag me into the business of course I can speak to the seal cutter and he shall refund the whole thing is child's talk shame and senseless so who is an old child you know he has lived on the roofs these seventeen years and is as senseless as a milch goat he brought you here to assure himself that he was not breaking any law of the sarkar whose salt he ate many years ago he worships the dust of the feet of the seal cutter and that cow the bower has forbidden him to go and see his son what does so who know of your loss or the lightning post I have to watch his money going day by day to that lying beast below genus stamped her foot on the floor and nearly cried with vexation whilst at who was whimpering under a blanket in the corner and Azizan was trying to guide the pipe-stem of his foolish old mouth now the case stands thus unthinkingly I have laid myself open to the charge of aiding and abetting the seal cutter containing money under false pretences which is forbidden by section 420 of the Indian penal code I am helpless in the matter for these reasons I cannot inform the police what witnesses would support my statements genu refuses flatly and Azizan is a veiled woman somewhere near Bareilly lost in this big India of ours I dare not take the law into my own hands and speak to the seal cutter for certain I am I that not only would Serhu disbelieve me but this step would end in the poisoning of genu who is bound hands and foot by her debt to the Bunia Serhu is an old daughter and whenever we meet mobiles my idiotic joke that the Serkar rather patronizes the black art than otherwise his son is well now but Serhu is completely under the influence of the seal cutter by whose advice he regulates the affairs of his life genu watches daily the money that she hoped to weed all out of Serhu taken by the seal cutter and becomes daily more furious and solid she will never tell because she dare not but unless something happens to prevent her I am afraid that the seal cutter will die of cholera the white arsenic kind and that is the end and thus I shall have to be privy to a murder in the house of Serhu and of section 3 recording by J. Seguan Montreal February 2010 section 4 of library of the world's best mystery and detective stories volume 2 this is a LibriVox recording please visit LibriVox.org recording by J. Seguan library of the world's best mystery and detective stories volume 2 by Julian Hawthorne editor section 4 his wedded wife by Wurdeard Kipling crime murder in the marketplace and each will turn upon his neighbor anxious eyes that ask the man we hounded Cain some centuries ago across the world that bred the fear of our own misdeeds maintain today by Bart's Moralities Shakespeare says something about worms or it may be giant or beetles turning if you tread on them too severely the safest plan is never to tread on a worm not even on the last new subaltern from home with his buttons hardly out of their tissue paper and the red of sappy English beef in his cheeks this is the story of the worm that turned for the sake of brevity we will call Henry Augustus Ramsey Fairzane the worm although he really was an exceedingly pretty boy without hair on his face and with a waist like a girl's when he came out to the second shikaris and was made unhappy in several ways the shikaris are a high cast regiment and you must be able to do things well play a banjo or ride more than little or sing or act to get on with them the worm did nothing except fall off his pony and knock chips out of gateposts trap even that became monotonous after a time he objected to wist cut the cloth at billards sang out of tune kept very much to himself and wrote to his mama and sisters at home four of these five things were vices which the shikaris objected to and set themselves to eradicate everyone knows how subalterns are brothers subalterns softened and not permitted to be ferocious it is good and wholesome and does no one any harm unless tempers are lost and then there is trouble there was a man once but that is another story the shikaris secured the worm very much and he bore everything without winking he was so good and so anxious to learn and flushed pink that his education was cut short and he was left to his own devices by everyone except the senior subaltern who continued to make life a burden to the worm the senior subaltern meant no harm but his travel was cause and he didn't quite understand where to stop he had been waiting too long for his company and that always sour as a man also he was in love which made him worse one day after he had borrowed the worm's trap for a lady who never existed had used it himself all the afternoon had sent a note to the worm purporting to come from the lady and was telling the mess all about it the worm rose and his place and said in his quiet lady like boys that was a very pretty sale but I'll lay you to a month's pay when you get your step that I work a sell on you that you'll remember for the rest of your days and the regiment after you when you're dead or broke the worm wasn't angry in the least and the rest of the mess shouted then the senior subaltern looked at the worm from the boot up word and down again and said hey the worm took the rest of the mess to witness that the bet had been taken and retired into a book with a sweet smile two months passed and the senior subaltern still educated the worm who began to move about a little more as the hot water came on I have said that the senior subaltern was in love the curious thing is that a girl was in love with the senior subaltern though the colonel said awful things and the major snorted and married captains looked unutterable wisdom and the juniors coughed those too were engaged the senior subaltern was so placed with getting his company and his acceptance at the same time that he forgot to bother the worm the girl was a pretty girl and had money of her own she does not come into the story at all one night at the beginning of the hot weather all the mess except the worm who had gone to his own room to write home letters were sitting on the platform outside the mess house the band had finished playing but no one wanted to go in and the captains wives were there also the folly of a man in love is unlimited the senior subaltern had been holding forth on the merits of the girl he was engaged to and the ladies were purring approval while the man yawned when there was a rustle of scourge in the dark and the tired faint voice lifted itself where's my husband I do not wish in the least to reflect on the morality of the chicory but it is on record that four men jumped up as if they had been shot three of them were married men perhaps they were afraid that their wives had come from home unpronounced the fourth said that he had acted on the impulse of the moment he explained this afterwards then the voice cried oh Lionel Lionel was the senior subaltern's name a woman came into the little circle of light by the candles on the peg tables stretching out her hands to the dark where the senior subaltern was and sobbing we rose to our feet feeling that things were going to happen and ready to believe the worst in this bad small world of ours one knows so little of the life of the next man which after all is entirely his own concern that one is not surprised when a crash comes anything might turn up any time for anyone perhaps the senior subaltern had been trapped in his youth men are crippled that way occasionally we didn't know we wanted to hear and the captain's wives were as anxious as we if he had been trapped he was to be excused for the woman from nowhere in the dusty shoes and grey travelling dress was very lovely was black hair and great eyes full of tears she was tall with a fine figure and her voice had a running sob in it pitiful to hear as soon as the senior subaltern stood up she threw her arms round his neck and called him my darling and said she could not bear waiting alone in England and his letters were so short and cold and she was his to the end of the world and would he forgive her this did not sound quite like a lady's way of speaking it was too demonstrative saying seemed black indeed and the captain's wives peered under their eyebrows at the senior subaltern and the coronal's face said like the day of judgement framed in grey bristles and no one spoke for a while next the coronal said very shortly well sir and the women sobbed afresh the senior subaltern was how choked with the arms round his neck but he gasped out it's a lie I've never had a wife in my life don't swear said the coronal come into the mess we must sift this clear somehow and he sighed to himself for he believed in his secretaries did the coronal we tripped into the enter room under the four lights and there we saw how beautiful the women was she stood up in the middle of us all sometimes choking with crying then hardened proud and then holding out her arms to the senior subaltern it was like the fourth act of a tragedy she told us how the senior subaltern had married her when he was home on leave 18 months before and she seemed to know all that we knew and more too of his people and his past life he was white and ashy grey trying now and again to break into the torrent of her words and we noting how lovely she was and what a criminal he looked esteemed him a beast of the worst kind we felt sorry for him though I shall never forget the indictment of the senior subaltern by his wife nor will he it was so sudden rushing out of the dark unannounced into our dull lives the captain's wife stood back but their eyes were alight and you could see that they had already convicted and sentenced the senior subaltern the coronal seemed five years older one major was shading his eyes with his hand and watching the woman from underneath it another was chewing his moustache and smiling quietly as if he were witnessing a play falling the open space in the centre by the wish tables the senior subaltern's terrier was hunting for fleas I remember all days as clearly as there were photographs were in my hand I remember the look of horror on the senior subaltern's face it was rather like seeing a man hanged but much more interesting finally the woman wound up by saying that the senior subaltern carried the double F.M. in a tattoo on his left shoulder we all knew that and to our innocent minds it seemed to clinch the matter but one of the bachelor majors said very politely I presume that your marriage certificate would be more to the purpose that roused the woman she stood up and sneered at the senior subaltern for a care and abused the major and the colonel and all the rest then she wept and then she pulled a paper from her breast saying impurely take that and let my husband my lawfully wedded husband read it aloud if he dare there was a hush and the men looked into each other's eyes as the senior subaltern came forward in a dazed and dizzy way and took the paper we were wondering as we stared where to do was anything against any one of us that might turn up later on the senior subaltern's throat was dry but as he ran his eye over the paper he broke out into a hoarse cackle of relief and sent to the woman you young black god but the woman had fled through a door and on the paper was written this is to certify that I the womb have paid in full my debt to the senior subaltern and further that the senior subaltern is my debtor by agreement on the 23rd of February as by the mess is tested to the extent of one month's captain's pay in the lawful currency of the India Amperior then a deputation set up for the Worm's quarters and found him betwixt and between unlacing his stays with the hat, wit, surge dress etc on the bed he came over as he was and the security shouted till the gunners mess sent over to know if they might have a share of the fun I think we were all except the colonel and the senior subaltern a little disappointed that the scandal had come to nothing but that is human nature there could be no two words about the Worm's acting it leaned as near to a nasty tragedy as anything this side of a joke can when most of the subalterns sat upon him with sofa cushions to find out why he had not said that acting was his strong point he answered very quietly I don't think you ever asked me I used to act at home with my sisters but no acting with girls could account for the Worm's display that night personally, I think it was in bad taste besides being dangerous there is no sort of use in playing with fire even for fun the sickeries made him president of the regimental dramatic club and when the senior subaltern paid up his debt they did at once the Worm sank the money in scenery and dresses he was a good Worm and the sickeries are proud of him the only drawback is that he has been christened misses senior subaltern and as there are now two mister senior subalterns in the station this is sometimes confusing to strangers later on I will tell you of a case something like this but with all the chest left out and nothing in it but real trouble end of section 4 recording by JC Guan Montreal February 2010 section 5 of library of the world's best mystery and detective stories volume 2 this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information auto volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Michael Wolfe library of the world's best mystery and detective stories volume 2 by Julian Hawthorne editor section 5 a case of identity part 1 by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle my dear fellow said Sherlock Holmes as we sat on either side of the fire in his lodgings at Baker Street life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man can invent we would not dare to conceive the things which are really mere common places of existence if we could fly out of that window hand in hand hover over this great city gently remove the roofs and peep in at the queer things which are going on strange coincidences the plannings, the cross purposes the wonderful chains of events working through generations and leading to the most utre results it would make all fiction with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions most stale and unprofitable and yet I am not convinced of it I answer the cases which come to light in the papers are as a rule bold enough and vulgar enough we have enough police reports realism pushed to its extreme limits yet the result is it must be confessed neither fascinating nor artistic a certain selection and discretion must be used in producing a realistic effect remarked Holmes this is wanting in the police report where more stress is laid perhaps upon the platitudes of the magistrate then upon the details which to an observer contain the vital essence of the whole matter depend upon it there is nothing so unnatural as the common place I smiled and shook my head I can quite understand your thinking so I said of course in your position of unofficial advisor and helper to everybody who was absolutely puzzled throughout three continents you were brought in contact with all that is strange and bizarre but here I picked up the morning paper from the ground let us put it to a practical test here is the first heading upon which I come a husband's cruelty to his wife there is half a column of print but I know without reading it that it is all perfectly familiar to me there is of course the other woman the drink the push the blow the bruise the unsympathetic sister or landlady the crudest of writers could invent nothing more crude indeed your example is an unfortunate one for your argument said Holmes taking the paper and glancing his eye down it this is the Dunder separation case and as it happens I was engaged in clearing up some small points in connection with it the husband was a teetotaler there was no other woman what he complained of was that he had drifted into the habit of winding up every meal by taking out his false teeth and hurling them at his wife which you will allow is not an action likely to occur to the imagination of the average storyteller take a pinch of snuff doctor and acknowledge that I have scored over you in your example he held out a snuff box of old gold with a great amethyst in the centre of the lid its splendour was in such contrast to his homely ways and simple life I could not help commenting upon it ah! said he I forgot that I had not seen you for some weeks it is a little souvenir from the king of Bohemia in return for my assistance in the case of the Irene Adler papers and the rain I asked glancing at a remarkable brilliant which sparkled upon his finger it was from the reigning family of Holland though the matter in which I served them was of such delicacy that I cannot confide it even to you who have been good enough to chronicle one or two of my little problems and have you any on hand just now I asked with interest some ten or twelve but none which present any features of interest they are important you understand without being interesting indeed I found that it is usually in unimportant matters that there is a field for the observation and for the quick analysis of cause and effect which gives the charm to an investigation the larger crimes are apt to be the simpler for the bigger the crime the more obvious as a rule is the motive in these cases say for one rather intricate matter which has been referred to me from our sales there is nothing which presents any features of interest it is possible however that I may have something better before very many minutes are over for this is one of my clients or I am much mistaken he had risen from his chair and was standing between the potted blinds gazing down into the dull neutral tinted London street looking over a shoulder I saw that on the pavement opposite there stood a large woman with a heavy fur boa round her neck and a large curling red feather in a broad brimmed hat which was tilted in a coquettish Duchess of Devonshire fashion over her ear from under this great panoply she peeped up in a nervous hesitating fashion at our windows while her body oscillated backward and forward as fidgeted with her glove-buttons suddenly with a plunge as of the swimmer who leaves the bank she hurried across the road and we heard the sharp clang of the bell I have seen those symptoms before said Holmes throwing a cigarette into the fire oscillation upon the pavement always means an affair to occur as she would like advice but is not sure that the matter is not too delicate for communication and yet even here we may discriminate when a woman has been seriously wronged by a man she no longer oscillates and the usual symptom is a broken bell-wire here we may take it that there is a love matter but that the maiden is not so much angry as perplexed or grieved but here she comes in person to resolve her doubts as he spoke there was a tap at the door and the boy in buttons entered to announce Miss Mary Sutherland while the lady herself loomed behind his small black figure like a full-sailed merchantman behind a tiny pilot boat Sherlock Holmes welcomed her with the easy courtesy for which she was remarkable and having closed the door and bowed her into an armchair he looked her over in the minute and yet abstracted fashion which was peculiar to him do you not find, he said that with your short sight it is a little trying to do so much typewriting I did at first she answered but now I know where the letters are without looking then suddenly realising the full purport of his words she gave a violent start and looked up with fear and astonishment upon her broad good-humoured face you've heard about me, Mr. Holmes she cried else, how could you know all that never mind said Holmes, laughing it is my business to know things perhaps I have trained myself to see what others overlook if not, why should you come to consult me I came to you, sir because I heard of you from Mrs. Etheridge whose husband you found so easily when the police and everyone had given him up for dead oh Mr. Holmes I wish you would do as much for me I'm not rich, but still I have a hundred a year on my own right besides the little that I make by the machine and I would give it all to know what has become of Mr. Hosmer Angel why did you come away to consult me in such a hurry asked Sherlock Holmes with his fingertips together and his eyes to the ceiling again a startled look over the somewhat vacuous face of Mrs. Mary Sutherland yes, I did bang out of the house she said for it made me angry to see the easy way in which Mr. Winderbank that is my father took it all he would not go to the police and he would not go to you and so at last as he would do nothing and kept on saying that there was no harm done it made me mad and I just on with my things and came right away to you your father Mr. Holmes your stepfather surely since the name is different yes, my stepfather I call him father though it sounds funny too for he's only five years and two months older than myself and your mother is alive oh yes mother is alive and well I wasn't best pleased Mr. Holmes when she married again so soon after father's death and a man who was nearly fifteen years younger than herself father was a plumber in the Tottenham Court Road and he left a tiny business behind him which mother carried on with Mr. Hardy the foreman but when Mr. Winderbank came he made her sell the business for he was very superior being a traveller in wines they got four thousand seven hundred for the goodwill and interest which wasn't near as much as father could have got if he'd been alive I'd expected to see Sherlock Holmes impatient under this rambling and inconsequential narrative but on the contrary he had listened with the greatest concentration of attention he didn't come, he asked does it come out of the business oh no sir it is quite separate and was left me by my uncle Ned in Auckland it is a New Zealand stock paying four and a half percent two thousand five hundred pounds was the amount but I can only touch the interest you interest me extremely said Holmes and since you draw so large a sum as a hundred a year with what you earn into the bargain you no doubt travel a little and indulge yourself in every way I believe that a single lady can get on very nicely upon an income of about sixty pounds I could do with much less than that Mr. Holmes but you understand that as long as I live at home I don't wish to be a burden to them and so they have the use of the money just while I'm staying with them of course that is only just for the time Mr. Winderbank draws my interest every quarter and pays it over to mother and I find that I can do pretty well with what I earn a type writing it brings me tuppence a sheet and I can often do from fifteen to twenty sheets in a day you have made your position very clear to me said Holmes this is my friend Dr. Watson before whom you can speak as freely as before myself kindly tell us now all about your connection with Mr. Hosmer Angel a flush stole over Miss Sutherland's face and she picked nervously at the fringe of her jacket I met him first at the gas-fitters ball she said they used to send father tickets when he was alive and then afterwards they remembered us and sent them to mother Mr. Winderbank did not wish us to go he never did wish us to go anywhere he would get quite mad if I wanted so much as to join a Sunday-school treat but this time I was set on going and I would go for what right had he to prevent he said the folk were not fit for us to know when all father's friends were to be there and he said that I had nothing fit to wear when I had my purple plush that I had never so much as taken out of the drawer at last when nothing else were due he went off to France upon the business of the firm but we went, mother and I, with Mr. Hardy who used to be our foreman and it was there I met Mr. Hosmer Angel I suppose said Holmes that when Mr. Winderbank came back from France he was very annoyed at your having gone to the ball oh well he was very good about it he laughed I remember and shrugged his shoulders and said there was no use denying to a woman for she would have her way I see then at the gas-fitters ball you met as I understand a gentleman called Mr. Hosmer Angel yes sir I met him that night and he called next day to ask if we'd got home all safe and after that we met him that is to say Mr. Holmes I met him twice for walks but after that father came back again and Mr. Hosmer Angel could not come to the house anymore no well you know the father didn't like anything of the sort he wouldn't have any visitors if he could help it and he used to say that a woman should be happy in her own family circle but then as I used to say to mother a woman wants her own circle to begin with and I had not got mine yet but how about Mr. Hosmer Angel did he make no attempt to see you well father was going off to France again in a week and Hosmer wrote and said that it would be safer and better not to see each other until he'd gone we could write in the meantime and he used to write every day I took the letters in the morning so there was no need for father to know were you engaged to the gentleman at this time oh yes Mr. Holmes we were engaged after the first walk that we took Hosmer Mr. Angel was a cashier in an office in Leddenhall street and what office that's the worst of it Mr. Holmes I don't know where did he live then and you don't know his address no except that he was Leddenhall street where did you address your letters then to the Leddenhall street post office to be left till called for he said that if they were sent to the office he would be chafed by all the other clerks about having letters from a lady so I offered to typewrite them like he did his but he wouldn't have that for he said that when I wrote them they seemed to come from me the machine had come between us that would just show you how fond he was of me Mr. Holmes and the little things that he would think of it was most suggestive, said Holmes it has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important can you remember any other little things about Mr. Hosmer Angel he was a very shy man Mr. Holmes he would rather walk with me in the evening than in the daylight for he said that he hated to be conspicuous and very retiring and gentlemanly he was even his voice was gentle he'd had the Quincy and swollen glands when he was young he told me and that had left him with a weak throat and a hesitating whispering fashion of speech he was always well dressed very neat and plain but his eyes were weak just as mine are and he wore tinted glasses against the glare well and what happened when Mr. Winderbank your stepfather returned to France Mr. Hosmer Angel came to the house again and proposed that we should marry Mr. Hosmer came back he was in dreadful earnest and made me swear with my hands on the testament that whatever happened I would always be true to him mother said he was quite right to make me swear and that was a sign of his passion mother was all in his favour from the first and was even fonder of him than I was then when they talked of marrying within the week I began to ask about father but they both said never to mind about father but just to tell him afterwards and mother said she would make it all right with him I didn't quite like that Mr. Holmes it seemed funny that I should ask his leave as he was only a few years older than me but I didn't want to do anything on the sly so I wrote to father at Bordeaux where the company has its French offices but the letter came back to me on the very morning of the wedding it missed him then yes sir for you'd started to England just before it arrived ha! that was unfortunate your wedding was arranged then for the Friday was it to be in church? yes sir but very quietly there were no saviours near King's Cross and we were to have breakfast afterwards at the St. Pancras Hotel Hosmer came for us in a handsome but as there were two of us he put us both into it and stepped himself into a four-wheeler which happened to be the only other cab in the street we got to the church first and when the four-wheeler drove up we waited for him to step out but he never did and when the cab man got down from the box and looked there was no one there the cab man said that he could not imagine what had become of him his own eyes that was last Friday, Mr. Holmes and I've never seen or heard anything since then to throw any light upon what became of him it seems to me that you've been very shamefully treated said Holmes oh no sir he was too good and kind to leave me so why all the morning he was saying to me that whatever happened I was to be true and that even if something quite unforeseen occurred to separate us I was always to remember that I was pledged to him sooner or later it seems strange talk for a wedding morning but what has happened since gives a meaning to it most certainly it does your own opinion is then that some unforeseen catastrophe has occurred to him yes sir I believe that he foresaw some danger or else he would not have talked so and then I think that what he foresaw happened but you have no notion as to what it could have been none one more question how did your mother take the matter she was angry and said I was never to speak of the matter again and your father did you tell him yes and he seemed to think with me that something had happened and that I should hear of Hosmer again as he said what interest could anyone have in bringing me to the door of the church and then leaving me now if he'd borrowed my money or if he'd married me and got my money settled on him there might be some reason but Hosmer was very independent about money and never would look at a shilling of mine and yet what could have happened and why could he not write oh he drives me half mad to think of and I can't sleep a wink at night she pulled a little handkerchief out of a moth and began to sob heavily into it I shall glance into the case for you set homes rising and I have no doubt that we shall reach some definite result let the weight of the matter rest upon me now and do not let your mind dwell upon it further above all and to let Mr. Hosmer angel vanish from your memory as he has done from your life then you don't think I'll see him again I fear not then what has happened to him you will leave that question in my hands I should like an accurate description of him and any letters of his which you can spare I advertised for him in last Saturday's Chronicle said she here is a slip and here are four letters from him thank you and your address number 31 line place Camberwell Mr. Angel's address you never had I understand where is your father's place of business he travels for West House and Marbank the great Clarratt Importers of Fenn Church Street thank you you have made your statement very clearly you will leave the papers here and remember the advice which I have given you let the whole incident be a sealed book and do not allow it to affect your life you are very kind Mr. Holmes but I cannot do that I shall be true to Hosmer he shall find me ready when he comes back for all the preposterous hat and the vacuous face there was something noble in the simple faith of our visitor which compelled I respect she laid her little bundle of papers upon the table and went her way with a promise to come again whenever she might be summoned end of section 5