5 Detective Novels Magazine Cover — page 125: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

CANDID A thought bothered him for a moment. Valborg had been feeling rather low lately. The doctor had said her heart was not quite up to par, cautioned her against late hours and too much exercise or ex- citement. But that was all a pack of non- sense. What did doctors know about it, anyway ? They always had to find an ail- ment when a person called on them, oes they couldn’t justly their ees ED APPLES had been ducked for, fortunes told. The guests had danced to music from the radio. Now, with the empty plates of the repast stacked in the kitchen, they gathered in the firelight to spin ghost yarns. All the old favorites were paraded—the Golden Arm, the Monkey’s Paw, Wandering Willie’s Tale. Sulkas had grown rest- less. In a little while good nights would be in order, and he had to set his stage. “Speaking of hauntings,” he said abruptly with raised voice, “did any of you know that old Mount Holly Ceme- tery is supposed to be infested with a specially malignant specter?” A little murmur of awed negatives went round the firelit room. “Mount Holly, right over there by Ridgewood? Tell us about it!” This was better, he thought compla- cently. Now to work. “There doesn’t seem to be much known about it, really,” he began with a light cough of deprecation. “The origin of the legend seems to have been lost. Some say it is the ghost of a sorcerer executed by the Dutch for witchcraft. There’s an- other version that declares the specter is the wraith of a traitor who betrayed a company of Continentals to the British. Judging from the things I’ve heard, I’d say it is the ghost of a slave who set fire to the farmhouse of ‘his master and was trapped and burned to death himself. “Just whose the ghost is seems a mys- tery, but there are some pretty well au- thenticated stories of its appearance es- pecially on Hallowe’en. It must be an un- pleasant-looking thing enveloped in a long white winding sheet, with only a skull and no face, all glowing with hell fire. Its dreadful power is to blast the person who sees it with blindness.” “Blindness?” asked Tim Stephan. CAMERA 125 “How do you mean, Paul?” “All I know is what I’ve heard, of course. But up to twenty years ago there was an old man out at Rockville Centre. He had been stone-blind for almost fifty years. Until the night he tried to take a short cut through Mount Holly, though, he could see as well as anybody. Better than most folks, in fact. He was a fa- mous marksman and hardly ever failed to carry off first prize at the turkey shoots they used to have on the island every Christmas. “Well, it seems one night he found himself out late, with no way of getting home but walking. A storm was blowing up. He was in so great a hurry that he decided to cut through Mount Holly. He almost got through. Just as he came to the plot reserved for suicides’ and fe- lons’ burial, something seemed to rise up from the ground in front of him—a form draped in a sheet, with a skeleton’s face all glowing, as if ‘it were incandes- cent, and eyes aS green as a cat’s. He stood rooted to the spot with terror. The thing went at him with a dreadful groan. Then, just as he thought it was about to seize him, it exploded.” “Exploded?” came the chorus from the listeners. “What do you mean?” “T don’t mean anything,” he answered reprovingly. “I wasn’t there. I didn’t see it. ’'m only saying what he said. The thing seemed to explode, vanish in a blaze of blinding light that left him daz- zled—permanently.” No one spoke for a minute. Was this a hoax, a trick to force a final question and make a fool of him who asked it? At last Tim Stephan cleared his throat. “All right, I’ll bite. What do you mean, he was permanently dazzled, Paul?” “Just what I say. He never got his sight back. They found him the next morning, threshing around the grave- yard, barging into tombstones, tearing himself to ribbons on the briars, blind as a mole. He was only twenty then. He lived past seventy, but all the years be- tween he spent in darkness.” A long-drawn exclamation of horror exhaled through the living room, almost as if it were a gust of wind become ar- ticulate. Sulkas glanced at Valborg sit- ting on a hassock by the fire, elbow on knee, chin cupped in one hand, her wine- CoOMmiclooo S (C(O)