by Fritz Leiber
Impatient of the suspense, I jerked the curtain back so sharply that it parted from its string and hung like a funeral weed across the upper corner of the frame.
With a gasp I started back from it—for Carrington had painted it entirely out with a thick coat of bister! The dark, shiny mess was still wet to my touch.
It seemed to me that a faint chuckle echoed through the room. It was but the ghost of a chuckle—such as might come from the dry lips of Thothmes III in the museum, were it to be discovered that he was not Thothmes at all, but someone else: say, the queen’s favorite.
Yet when I turned nervously toward the living and the dead there was no change, save indeed—and this may have been a fancy—the pride in the old gentleman’s face seemed to have overmastered the grief.
JOHNNY ON THE SPOT, by Frank Belknap Long
Originally published in Unknown, December 1939.
I was Johnny on the spot. I had left a guy lying in a dark alley with a copper jacketed bullet in him, and the cops were naming me. They were also naming a torpedo named Jack Anders. Anders had ducked out of the alley, the back way, without stopping to see if I was tagging after. The bullet had come out of Anders’ gun, but I was as much to blame as he was for what had happened.
Wait, I’ve got to be honest about this. I was more to blame. He was the trigger man, but I had put the finger on the guy in the first place. I wanted to get away from the bright lights, because when I stared at my hands in the glare of the street lamps they seemed to change color. I couldn’t stand the sight of myself in the light. My red hands.
In the dark I could forget about my hands. I wanted to dance in darkness to the strains of soft music. It was a screwy sort of urge, considering. All over town the teletype was naming me. By going into that taxi dance hall, I was exposing myself to more publicity on the same night.
I should have stayed with the crowds in the street. But I’m a restless sort of guy. When I get a yen I have to satisfy it, even if it means extra leg work for the cops.
A dozen heavily rouged dolls in romper suits were standing around under dim lights when I entered the hall. I walked past the ticket window and mingled with the sappy-looking patrons. The Johnnies who patronize taxi dance halls are all of one type: dumb, awkward-looking clucks who have to shell out dough to get favors from dames.
With me it’s different. All I have to do is snap my little finger. I don’t mean I could have got by in there without buying a ticket. Not for long. But there’s a rule which says you can look the dames over and walk out again if you’re not suited. All I did at first was mingle with the patrons and size up the dames. And that’s how I came to overhear the conversation.
The two dames who were whispering together were standing off in one corner away from the ropes. One was a blonde with cold eyes and an “I’ve been around” look.
The other girl was young and sweet; I could tell just by looking at her that she hadn’t been around at all.
The blonde’s eyes were boring like a dental drill into the younger girl’s face. I stood close beside her, listening to what she was saying. She wasn’t giving that poor kid a ghost of a break.
“You’re pretty smart, aren’t you?” she taunted. “You think you’ve got something.”
The dark-haired girl shook her head. “No, Dixie, no. I didn’t say that. I don’t know why he likes me. I swear I don’t.”
“Quit stalling, hon. You know how to use what you’ve got. You’re smart, all right, but not as smart as I am. I’m taking him from you, see?”
Sudden terror flared in the younger girl’s eyes. She grasped her companion’s wrist and twisted her about.
“You can’t do that! I love him. I love him, do you hear?”
The blonde wrenched her wrist free. “You’ll get over it, hon,” she sneered, her lips twisting maliciously. “They all do. I can’t help it if I like the guy.”
“You like him because he’s rich. Not for what he is. You got lots of men crazy about you.”
“Sure, I have. But Jimmy’s different. Maybe I do love his dough. So what? Don’t you love his dough?”
“I swear I don’t, Dixie. I’d love him if he didn’t have a cent.”
“He’s all you’ve got, eh? Well, ain’t that too bad?”
“You won’t take him away, Dixie. Promise me you won’t.”
Dixie laughed. “I’m taking him tonight, hon. I’ve had plenty of experience with guys like Jimmy.”
I knew then that Dixie was the girl for me. I stepped up to her and held out my arms.
“Dance, honey?” I said.
She was plenty startled. She stared at me for an instant in a funny sort of way. Like she knew I was standing there, but couldn’t see me.
Then her arms went out and around my shoulders. We started to dance, moving out into the hall.
We were in the middle of the floor when something seemed to whisper deep inside of me: “Now, now, while the lights are low and music is like a whisper from the tomb.”
I stopped dancing suddenly and clasped her in my arms. “You’ll never take Jimmy away from her,” I whispered.
She was a smart one, that girl. She recognized me an instant before I kissed her. She whimpered in terror and struggled like a pinioned bird in my clasp.
“Spare me,” she moaned. “Come back in a year, a month. I’ll be waiting for you. I won’t run out on you. I swear it.”
“You played me for a sap,” I said. “You were warned about your ticker, but you went right on dancing.”
“I’ll stop tonight,” she promised wildly. “Give me a few days—a week.”
I shook my head. “Sorry, girlie. This is the payoff.”
It’s funny how near I can get to people without frightening them. When she sagged to the floor, the couples about us went right on dancing. The lights were so dim they didn’t notice her lying still and cold at my feet.
For three or four seconds no one noticed her. Then one of the girls saw her and screamed. All over the floor men and women stopped dancing and crowded about her. I knew that in a moment they would be naming me again. So I slipped silently from the place.
I do not like to be named. In that dance hall I was just a lonely guy looking for a dance to waltz with. I am only Death when I strike, and between times I am like the people about me.
Maybe you’ll meet me sometime in a crowd. But you won’t recognize me because I take color from my surroundings. I am always fleeing from what I have to do. I am a Johnny on the spot. But in the end—in the end I meet up with practically everyone.
THE HAUNTED CHAIR, by Richard Marsh
Originally published in Between the Dark and the Daylight (1902).
CHAPTER I
“Well, that’s the most staggering thing I’ve ever known!”
As Mr. Philpotts entered the smoking-room, these were the words—with additions—which fell upon his, not unnaturally, startled ears. Since Mr. Bloxham was the only person in the room, it seemed only too probable that the extraordinary language had been uttered by him—and, indeed, his demeanour went far to confirm the probability. He was standing in front of his chair, staring about him in a manner which suggested considerable mental perturbation, apparently unconscious of the fact that his cigar had dropped either from his lips or his fingers and was smoking merrily away on the brand-new carpet which the committee had just laid down. He turned to Mr. Philpotts in a state of what seemed really curious agitation.
“I say, Philpotts, did you see him?”
Mr. Philpotts looked at him in silence for a moment, before he drily said, “I heard you.”
But Mr. Bloxham was in no mood to be put off in this manner. He seemed, for some cause, to have lost the air of serene indifference for which he was famed—he was in a state of excitement, which, for him, was quite phenomena
l.
“No nonsense, Philpotts—did you see him?”
“See whom?” Mr. Philpotts was selecting a paper from a side table. “I see your cigar is burning a hole in the carpet.”
“Confound my cigar!” Mr. Bloxham stamped on it with an angry tread. “Did Geoff Fleming pass you as you came in?”
Mr. Philpotts looked round with an air of evident surprise.
“Geoff Fleming!—Why, surely he’s in Ceylon by now.”
“Not a bit of it. A minute ago he was in that chair talking to me.”
“Bloxham!” Mr. Philpotts’ air of surprise became distinctly more pronounced, a fact which Mr. Bloxham apparently resented.
“What are you looking at me like that for pray? I tell you I was glancing through the Field, when I felt someone touch me on the shoulder. I looked round—there was Fleming standing just behind me. ‘Geoff,’ I cried, ‘I thought you were on the other side of the world—what are you doing here?’ ‘I’ve come to have a peep at you,’ he said. He drew a chair up close to mine—this chair—and sat in it. I turned round to reach for a match on the table, it scarcely took me a second, but when I looked his way again hanged if he weren’t gone.”
Mr. Philpotts continued his selection of a paper—in a manner which was rather marked.
“Which way did he go?”
“Didn’t you meet him as you came in?”
“I did not—I met no one. What’s the matter now?”
The question was inspired by the fact that a fresh volley of expletives came from Mr. Bloxham’s lips. That gentleman was standing with his hands thrust deep into his trouser pockets, his legs wide open, and his eyes and mouth almost as wide open as his legs.
“Hang me,” he exclaimed, when, as it appeared, he had temporarily come to the end of his stock of adjectives, “if I don’t believe he’s boned my purse.”
“Boned your purse!” Mr. Philpotts laid a not altogether flattering emphasis upon the “boned!” “Bloxham! What do you mean?”
Mr. Bloxham did not immediately explain. He dropped into the chair behind him. His hands were still in his trouser pockets, his legs were stretched out in front of him, and on his face there was not only an expression of amazement, but also of the most unequivocal bewilderment. He was staring at the vacant air as if he were trying his hardest to read some riddle.
“This is a queer start, upon my word, Philpotts,” he spoke in what, for him, were tones of unwonted earnestness. “When I was reaching for the matches on the table, what made me turn round so suddenly was because I thought I felt someone tugging at my purse—it was in the pocket next to Fleming. As I told you, when I did turn round Fleming was gone—and, by Jove, it looks as though my purse went with him.”
“Have you lost your purse?—is that what you mean?”
“I’ll swear that it was in my pocket five minutes ago, and that it’s not there now; that’s what I mean.”
Mr. Philpotts looked at Mr. Bloxham as if, although he was too polite to say so, he could not make him out at all. He resumed his selection of a paper.
“One is liable to make mistakes about one’s purse; perhaps you’ll find it when you get home.”
Mr. Bloxham sat in silence for some moments. Then, rising, he shook himself as a dog does when he quits the water.
“I say, Philpotts, don’t ladle out this yarn of mine to the other fellows, there’s a good chap. As you say, one is apt to get into a muddle about one’s purse, and I dare say I shall come across it when I get home. And perhaps I’m not very well this afternoon; I am feeling out of sorts, and that’s a fact. I think I’ll just toddle home and take a seidlitz, or a pill, or something. Ta ta!”
When Mr. Philpotts was left alone he smiled to himself, that superior smile which we are apt to smile when conscious that a man has been making a conspicuous ass of himself on lines which may be his, but which, we thank Providence, are emphatically not ours. With not one, but half a dozen papers in his hand, he seated himself in the chair which Mr. Bloxham had recently relinquished. Retaining a single paper, he placed the rest on the small round table on his left—the table on which wore the matches for which Mr. Bloxham declared he had reached. Taking out his case, he selected a cigar almost with the same care which he had shewn in selecting his literature, smiling to himself all the time that superior smile. Lighting the cigar he had chosen with a match from the table, he settled himself at his ease to read.
Scarcely had he done so than he was conscious of a hand laid gently on his shoulder from behind.
“What! Back again?”
“Hullo, Phil!”
He had taken it for granted, without troubling to look round, that Mr. Bloxham had returned, and that it was he who touched him on the shoulder. But the voice which replied to him, so far from being Mr. Bloxham’s was one the mere sound of which caused him not only to lose his bearing of indifference but to spring from his seat with the agility almost of a jack-in-the-box. When he saw who it was had touched him on the shoulder, he stared.
“Fleming! Then Bloxham was right, after all. May I ask what brings you here?”
The man at whom he was looking was tall and well-built, in age about five and thirty. There were black cavities beneath his eyes; the man’s whole face was redolent, to a trained perception, of something which was, at least, slightly unsavoury. He was dressed from head to foot in white duck—a somewhat singular costume for Pall Mall, even on a summer afternoon.
Before Mr. Philpotts’ gaze, his own eyes sank. Murmuring something which was almost inaudible, he moved to the chair next to the one which Mr. Philpotts had been occupying, the chair of which Mr. Bloxham had spoken.
As he seated himself, Mr. Philpotts eyed him in a fashion which was certainly not too friendly.
“What did you mean by disappearing just now in that extraordinary manner, frightening Bloxham half out of his wits? Where did you get to?”
The newcomer was stroking his heavy moustache with a hand which, for a man of his size and build, was unusually small and white. He spoke in a lazy, almost inaudible, drawl.
“I just popped outside.”
“Just popped outside! I must have been coming in just when you went out. I saw nothing of you; you’ve put Bloxham into a pretty state of mind.”
Re-seating himself, Mr. Philpotts turned to put the paper he was holding on to the little table. “I don’t want to make myself a brute, but it strikes me that your presence here at all requires explanation. When several fellows club together to give another fellow a fresh start on the other side of the world—”
Mr. Philpotts stopped short. Having settled the paper on the table to his perfect satisfaction, he turned round again towards the man he was addressing—and as he did so he ceased to address him, and that for the sufficiently simple reason that he was not there to address—the man had gone! The chair at Mr. Philpotts’ side was empty; without a sign or a sound its occupant had vanished, it would almost seem, into space.
CHAPTER II
Under the really remarkable circumstances of the case, Mr. Philpotts preserved his composure to a singular degree. He looked round the room; there was no one there. He again fixedly regarded the chair at his side; there could be no doubt that it was empty. To make quite sure, he passed his hand two or three times over the seat; it met with not the slightest opposition. Where could the man have got to? Mr. Philpotts had not, consciously, heard the slightest sound; there had not been time for him to have reached the door. Mr. Philpotts knocked the ash off his cigar. He stood up. He paced leisurely two or three times up and down the room.
“If Bloxham is ill, I am not. I was never better in my life. And the man who tells me that I have been the victim of an optical delusion is talking of what he knows nothing. I am prepared to swear that it was Geoffrey Fleming who touched me on the shoulder; that he spoke to me; and
that he seated himself upon that chair. Where he came from, or where he has gone to, are other questions entirely.” He critically examined his finger nails.
“If those Psychical Research people have an address in town, I think I’ll have a talk with them. I suppose it’s three or four minutes since the man vanished. What’s the time now? Whatever has become of my watch?”
“He might well ask—it had gone, both watch and chain—vanished, with Mr. Fleming, into air. Mr. Philpotts stared at his waistcoat, too astonished for speech. Then he gave a little gasp.
“This comes of playing Didymus! The brute has stolen it! I must apologise to Bloxham. As he himself said, this is a queer start, upon my honour! Now, if you like, I do feel a little out of sorts; this sort of thing is enough to make one. Before I go, I think I’ll have a drop of brandy.”
As he was hesitating, the smoking-room door opened to admit Frank Osborne. Mr. Osborne nodded to Mr. Philpotts as he crossed the room.
“You’re not looking quite yourself, Philpotts.”
Mr. Philpotts seemed to regard the observation almost in the light of an impertinence.
“Am I not? I was not aware that there was anything in my appearance to call for remark.” Smiling, Mr. Osborne seated himself in the chair which the other had not long ago vacated. Mr. Philpotts regarded him attentively. “You’re not looking quite yourself, either.”
The smile vanished from Mr. Osborne’s face.
“I’m not feeling myself!—I’m not! I’m worried about Geoff Fleming.”
Mr. Philpotts slightly started.
“About Geoff Fleming?—what about Fleming?”